Digital Camera as a webcam ?

[casinada]

Does anybody know of a good digital camera that can be used as a webcam as well? The only thing I can do with the ones i have is to transfer pictures. I noticed on the Microscope camera review post that somebody is using a DSLR type as a livecam. I wonder if there is something like that in the $100 to $250 range......or may be a camcorder....

[Legit-Design]

Depends on the camera, if a camera has webcam function built in it's usually nowhere near the quality you would want. For example if your camera outputs hdmi (no copy protection) you can view and record it with pc and possibly use as webcam with hdmi capture device. Typically gamers use hdmi capture device. https://www.google.com/search?q=hdmi+capture+card+usb&oq=hdmi+cap Typically you find good reviews on youtube when people review their devices, some people make living only playing games and putting it up on youtube. This also works with composite video, then all you need is a composite capture card, or maybe one of those ati allinwonder display cards.
Most modern cameras should be capable of outputting hdmi.

Also note if they have the video on computer monitor it doesn't mean it's a webcam, they can hook up hdmi lead to a monitor and live view the picture. (I know there are technically retarded people who mix those two things, not saying you are)

You can even live view the hdmi picture from camera AND record at the same time, that could be better than just webcam functionality.

Good quality picture required lot of bandwidth, some cameras have something like this built in, but don't expect anywhere near the same picture quality what you get with when normally using the camera.

[mariush]

My old Canon A580 has composite or s-video out (i forget which now) and I actually recorded videos in the past by capturing the video with a tv tuner. Now i have an actual hd camera. I can set Yahoo Messenger or Skype to consider the tv tuner as a webcam so I suppose I could have used the digital camera like this.

The only problem was that the camera had an auto power off after 3-5 minutes (maximum configurable from menus), so I had to zoom in or do something on camera to prevent it from turning off. Nowadays, CHDK (custom firmware that doesn't overwrite original firmware on Canon cameras) can probably keep the camera running forever if powered from the dc input jack.

[Legit-Design]

Now i have an actual hd camera. I can set Yahoo Messenger or Skype to consider the tv tuner as a webcam so I suppose I could have used the digital camera like this.

Skype also supports IP cameras so you can stream video from android device and use it as wireless webcam (from half world away with internet!) http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-use-an-Android-phone-as-a-webcam-with-Skype/?ALLSTEPS

[Psi]

I avoid USB cameras, they're always slow and laggy above 320x240.
If it can do full 700 line TV res at 25FPS with no motion blur i'm happy (done can that i've seen).
I suspect it would require a hardware mpg/h264 encoder inside the camera to avoid USB bandwidth limitations for uncompressed video
Maybe USB3 would work though?  (640x480 requires around 184Mbit, which pushes USB2 a bit far once you take into account overheads and the fact USB2 never actually gets 480MBit).

Not that any of this really matters when using it to capture a static image of someone talking (Webcam style) but i still object to buying crappy blury usb webcams on principle.
Give me a camcorder with TVout and a PCI video capture device any day.

[GeoffS]

A Raspberry PI with the camera module (I know it's not real electronics ...)

I've just installed one as a weather camera, still shots only, but while testing found the video quality to be excellent.

[casinada]

I had ATI All in wonder Pro in the past even the PCI verson and even usb frame grabbers (probably I have them somewhere in my Garage).
I also wasted money a couple of years ago on one of those cheap microscopes reviewed by Dave. I have a nice little Canon SX230HS that has a mini HDMI connector but my main computer doesn't have HDMI input. I guess I can buy an HDMI to mini HDMI cable and try it on my laptop that has a HDMI connector. I liked the idea of ANDTFOOT with his Canon 550D camera but I don't know if he is just connecting the camera directly to to the ASUS LCD display or to the computer.

[Legit-Design]

I had ATI All in wonder Pro in the past even the PCI verson and even usb frame grabbers (probably I have them somewhere in my Garage).
I also wasted money a couple of years ago on one of those cheap microscopes reviewed by Dave. I have a nice little Canon SX230HS that has a mini HDMI connector but my main computer doesn't have HDMI input. I guess I can buy an HDMI to mini HDMI cable and try it on my laptop that has a HDMI connector. I liked the idea of ANDTFOOT with his Canon 550D camera but I don't know if he is just connecting the camera directly to to the ASUS LCD display or to the computer.

What are you trying to do? Do you want to use camera as a webcam? Do you want to view camera picture live on big screen? Your laptop probably has hdmi output, just because the connector plugs both ways doesn't necessarily make it input.

If it's only picture and no copy protection or bullshit then you can have HDMI-DVI adapter or just direct cable with hdmi and dvi connectors, either works the same. If you want to capture HDMI picture (and use it as webcam in applications) you still need HDMI capture device.

[EEVblog]

Does anybody know of a good digital camera that can be used as a webcam as well?

Why? Webcams are so cheap, compact, and powered from the USB.

[Psi]

HDMI PC inputs (for capturing HDMI) are pretty uncommon. You can get them, but they're specialized.
You wont find them for sale in the local computer shop, or find a laptop that has one built in.

[NiHaoMike]

Why? Webcams are so cheap, compact, and powered from the USB.

Cheap webcams come with cheap lenses and cheap CCDs. Good enough for most webcam uses, but maybe you're looking for a "professional" HDTV quality live broadcast over the web...

I have gotten great results with a DV camcorder plugged into the IEEE1394 port. Not sure if most HD camcorders and DSLRs can do live streaming, but they'll work great if they can.

I suppose you could get a Samsung Galaxy Camera or Galaxy NX and install an app to make it a wireless webcam... It will have hardware h.264 encoding as well...

One gotya when using a separate camera and microphone (anything that does not plug into or is synchronized with the camera) is that if you do long streams, the variations in clock frequencies cause you to lose sync after some time.

[casinada]

I was just thinking out loud here, firewire (IEEE 1394) ports always worked better and faster for audio and video than usb, but it seems that they are not as popular this days. I'm not very familiar with HDMI, the only thing I know is that they're adding that port to any new device manufactured this days. I assume that there is some sort of 2 way communication between the master and slave devices but I don't know if is symmetrical.
The idea of been able to plug my existing camera to the computer to get some real time quality video is very enticing, I wouldn't have to invest on dedicated equipment. I have a logitech webcam and it works very well but is not HD and the optics are not good as some of you mentioned. I also have one of those USB microscopes but is crappy and the LEDs never give the proper illumination. The Last camcorder i purchased predates the digital era so it has only composite video output. I should probably consider one of those Sony camcorders as they don't seem to be very expensive.

This article from 2011 is very interesting:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/diy-it/finding-a-camcorder-that-works-with-skype-is-harder-than-you-might-expect/106

So purchasing a Camcorder doesn't mean that I will be able to accomplish what I'm looking for
There are some Sony Camcorders that support USB Streaming but I don't know if they make those anymore.
I need to do more research dammit

[mariush]

HDMI is only input or output.  To get hdmi input, you need a hdmi capture card.  These cards will capture only if the device doesn't encrypt the video with hdcp.   Set top box decoders and similar devices will always encrypt output and do a sort of handshake with the tv/monitor/etc.

PS 4 and Xbox One have selective hdcp if I read/understood correctly ... most games don't enable it, it may be enabled when watching tv... I'm not sure. Perhaps the consoles still allow no encryption because the built in game streaming isn't so well developed.

Webcams, pretty much all on usb 2.0 nowadays will have a built in hardware encoder which will compress the images in h264 stream, send it through usb and then on pc you get the hd video played back, so there is some delay and naturally there's some quality loss due to compression.

usb 3.0 webcams have the bandwidth to stream the video lossless but I'm not sure a lot of them send the stream lossless. It's easy to just use a hardware encoder and just stream the encoded content to the pc.

Firewire ... was cool and it's slightly better than usb 2.0 latency and bandwidth wise (it can do 400-800 mbps while usb 2.0 can do 480 mbps but it's half duplex) but it was designed in such a way that it's dangerous (the connected device can write bytes directly into memory and so on and other such security risks).. that's why it's no longer used.

There are some very good webcams under $100, but if you want something more versatile there are good hd video cameras at around 150-200$ .

[NiHaoMike]

USB 3.0 is full duplex just like 1394. Still doesn't solve the problem of cheap lenses and cheap CCDs.

[Legit-Design]

There are actually some compact (still) cameras I've seen that have usb webcam functionality. Those are usually limited to something like 640x480 resolution.

I think most problems people have with cheaper webcams is they don't have enough light. Just because laptops have that small camera at top of the screen and it can be used for video chat, doesn't mean light from only the display is enough in otherwise dark room. Everyone who has even tried to film something in normal comfortable room lighting has had the same problem. I think it could be put "cheaper the camera more light you need". People who use better cameras usually know the importance of good light. Even if bigger sensor can take video in darker conditions it still doesn't look as good as it would with powerful lights. Powerful lights don't need to be expensive these days 20W+ E27 CFL bulbs are everywhere and if one isn't enough then get as many as you need.