I have used the c920 on a mac for years, and it has always been overexposed. I’m not sure whether it’s Logitech or Apple or both to blame here. The solution for me is to install the app “Webcam Settings” from the Apple store (yeah it’s a generic name), which lets you tweak many settings on webcams and save profiles for them. It’s not perfect, but I already have the camera and it’s significantly easier to work with than hooking my DSLR up.
The equivalent to “Webcam Settings” on Linux is guvcview. I have a Microsoft LifeCam Studio and have to use this tool to adjust the exposure when I plug it into a new machine. Thereafter it persists… somehow.
Or qv4l2, depending on your taste — but one advantage of qv4l2 is that it lets you set the controls even while another app has the camera open, whereas guvcview wants the camera for its own preview window, and will decline to work at all if it can’t get the video stream.
update: someone anon-emailed me out of the blue to mention that guvcview has a -z or --control-panel option that will open the control panel without the preview window, letting you do the same thing as qv4l2. So use the one that makes you happy.
Congrats, you are working around a hardware problem with a software patch.
Me, I don’t care enough to spend the effort to get the software working. My audio input is an analog mixer, my audio output the same, and eventually my camera will be a DSLR because that way I don’t twiddle with software for something that really should just work on all my machines without me caring.
It’s a driver settings tool, not a patch. It doesn’t do post-processing. Every OS just fails to provide this tool, not sure why, possibly because webcam support is spotty and they don’t want to deal with user complaints. Some software (like Teams) include an interface for the settings. Changing it in Teams will make system wide changes. Others (like Zoom) only have post-processing effects, and these are applied after the changes you made in Teams.
I can confirm this tool definitely affects the camera hardware’s exposure setting. I’ve used it for adjusting a camera that was pointed at a screen on a remote system I needed to debug. The surrounding room was dark (yay timezones!) so with automatic exposure settings it was just an overexposed white blur on a dark background. This tool fixed it. There’s no way this would have been possible with just post-processing.
(No, VNC or similar would not have helped, as it was an incompatibility specific to the connected display, so I needed to see the physical output. And by “remote” I mean about 9000km away.)
The DSLR/mirrorless ILC (interchangeable lens camera) route is great for quality but it has its risks. I started off with a $200 entry level kit and now I’ve got two bodies, a dozen lenses, 40,000 pictures, and a creatively fulfilling hobby.
I fail to see how you’re going to use a DSLR as a webcam without “twiddling with software”. Sure, you’ll have a much better sensor, lens and resulting image quality. But I’ve yet to see a setup (at least with my Canon) that doesn’t require multiple pieces of software to make even work as a webcam. Perhaps other brands have a smoother experience. I still question how this won’t require at least as much software as my route.
There’s also the physical footprint that matters to me. A webcam sits out of the way on top of my monitor with a single cable that plugs into the USB on the monitor. A DSLR is obviously nowhere near this simple in wiring or physical space. It also has a pretty decent pair of microphones that work perfectly for my quiet home office.
Are either the audio or video studio quality? Nope, but that’s completely fine for my use case interacting with some coworkers on video calls.
Really surprised by this comment on the Razer Kiyo:
The Razer and Adwaita webcams offer no settings software, leaving it to whichever capture application you’re using, if such controls are available.
We have these from work (and they’re pretty good - folks in Teams calls can tell if I’ve shaved) and they have a massive (200 MiB) app that provides a load of settings that I’ve never touched. One of my least favourite things about the device is that it appears to require this huge app to run and it has so many settings that I don’t want to touch because I want it to just work. Fortunately, it does seem to work pretty well if I just ignore all of the settings.
Picture quality isn’t my biggest complaint about video conferencing. I bet there’s big money to be made with a video transform filter that makes it look like you’re looking into the cam as if the cam were in the middle of your screen.
There was a successful crowdfunding project for The Center Cam in 2021 to solve this problem with hardware but yeah, a software filter would be cool but I think it’d also be pretty creepy because it won’t look quite right.
It’s funny, I hear people talk about this, but… I can’t even tell the difference, unless someone has a wildly different camera setup like those weird laptops with the camera on the main body.
Today I finally received a bunch of stuff from SmallRig for mounting my old Sony A7Sii to use as a webcam - I ordered it all a couple of days before WWDC, where Apple announced Continuity Camera (search on the page) which would’ve given me probably a better experience with only the purchase of a small mount for the phone. Their demo was pretty amazing, the Desk View feature being particularly amazing (though I’m sure in person it’s going to be lower quality than the video might make you believe.
It’s a nice change for Apple to start caring about webcams again, they have been atrocious until quite recently; it looks like some the M1/2 times are significantly better, particularly in low light, than the Intel machines ever had.
As a term it refers the phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants third-party software.
Before spotlight there was a built in search tool called Sherlock. In Nov 2001 Karelia release a companion application called Watson that used the plugin system of Sherlock to add web search functionality (e.g. movie times, prices for books off amazon, media search, etc). In Sept 2002 As part of OSX 10.2, Apple released Sherlock 3 which replicated almost all of the functionality of Watson.
Once a first party version was released the 3rd party tool it generally eliminates with original 3rd party tool.
I use Reincubate’s Camo as my webcam, and the camera on the back of my iPhone is substantially better than either of my other webcams (to say nothing of the garbage that Apple ships in their laptops). I am sorry that they got Sherlock’d, but that’s the way it goes.
I have used the c920 on a mac for years, and it has always been overexposed. I’m not sure whether it’s Logitech or Apple or both to blame here. The solution for me is to install the app “Webcam Settings” from the Apple store (yeah it’s a generic name), which lets you tweak many settings on webcams and save profiles for them. It’s not perfect, but I already have the camera and it’s significantly easier to work with than hooking my DSLR up.
The equivalent to “Webcam Settings” on Linux is
guvcview. I have a Microsoft LifeCam Studio and have to use this tool to adjust the exposure when I plug it into a new machine. Thereafter it persists… somehow.Or qv4l2, depending on your taste — but one advantage of qv4l2 is that it lets you set the controls even while another app has the camera open, whereas guvcview wants the camera for its own preview window, and will decline to work at all if it can’t get the video stream.
Oh very nice,
qv4l2is exactly what I needed to adjust focus during a meeting. Thank you!update: someone anon-emailed me out of the blue to mention that guvcview has a
-zor--control-paneloption that will open the control panel without the preview window, letting you do the same thing as qv4l2. So use the one that makes you happy.Congrats, you are working around a hardware problem with a software patch.
Me, I don’t care enough to spend the effort to get the software working. My audio input is an analog mixer, my audio output the same, and eventually my camera will be a DSLR because that way I don’t twiddle with software for something that really should just work on all my machines without me caring.
Different tradeoffs in different environments.
It’s a driver settings tool, not a patch. It doesn’t do post-processing. Every OS just fails to provide this tool, not sure why, possibly because webcam support is spotty and they don’t want to deal with user complaints. Some software (like Teams) include an interface for the settings. Changing it in Teams will make system wide changes. Others (like Zoom) only have post-processing effects, and these are applied after the changes you made in Teams.
I can confirm this tool definitely affects the camera hardware’s exposure setting. I’ve used it for adjusting a camera that was pointed at a screen on a remote system I needed to debug. The surrounding room was dark (yay timezones!) so with automatic exposure settings it was just an overexposed white blur on a dark background. This tool fixed it. There’s no way this would have been possible with just post-processing.
(No, VNC or similar would not have helped, as it was an incompatibility specific to the connected display, so I needed to see the physical output. And by “remote” I mean about 9000km away.)
Sounds like you had some fun
That’s definitely one way of describing it! Not necessarily my choice of words at the time.
Oh, Teams can do this? Thanks, I’ll have to check that out as an alternative.
The DSLR/mirrorless ILC (interchangeable lens camera) route is great for quality but it has its risks. I started off with a $200 entry level kit and now I’ve got two bodies, a dozen lenses, 40,000 pictures, and a creatively fulfilling hobby.
don’t forget the tripod! I like landscape photography, and a good tripod was surprisingly (> $200) expensive.
So the risks are spending too much money?
I fail to see how you’re going to use a DSLR as a webcam without “twiddling with software”. Sure, you’ll have a much better sensor, lens and resulting image quality. But I’ve yet to see a setup (at least with my Canon) that doesn’t require multiple pieces of software to make even work as a webcam. Perhaps other brands have a smoother experience. I still question how this won’t require at least as much software as my route.
There’s also the physical footprint that matters to me. A webcam sits out of the way on top of my monitor with a single cable that plugs into the USB on the monitor. A DSLR is obviously nowhere near this simple in wiring or physical space. It also has a pretty decent pair of microphones that work perfectly for my quiet home office.
Are either the audio or video studio quality? Nope, but that’s completely fine for my use case interacting with some coworkers on video calls.
My perception has been a DSLR with HDMI output gives you the ability to capture HDMI and just shove that as a webcam line.
The other things that a camera does can be tweaked with knobs instead of software.
Really surprised by this comment on the Razer Kiyo:
We have these from work (and they’re pretty good - folks in Teams calls can tell if I’ve shaved) and they have a massive (200 MiB) app that provides a load of settings that I’ve never touched. One of my least favourite things about the device is that it appears to require this huge app to run and it has so many settings that I don’t want to touch because I want it to just work. Fortunately, it does seem to work pretty well if I just ignore all of the settings.
Picture quality isn’t my biggest complaint about video conferencing. I bet there’s big money to be made with a video transform filter that makes it look like you’re looking into the cam as if the cam were in the middle of your screen.
Apple has this in their facetime (called Eye contact)
Microsoft also has this on their Surface devices.
There was a successful crowdfunding project for The Center Cam in 2021 to solve this problem with hardware but yeah, a software filter would be cool but I think it’d also be pretty creepy because it won’t look quite right.
It’s funny, I hear people talk about this, but… I can’t even tell the difference, unless someone has a wildly different camera setup like those weird laptops with the camera on the main body.
Today I finally received a bunch of stuff from SmallRig for mounting my old Sony A7Sii to use as a webcam - I ordered it all a couple of days before WWDC, where Apple announced Continuity Camera (search on the page) which would’ve given me probably a better experience with only the purchase of a small mount for the phone. Their demo was pretty amazing, the Desk View feature being particularly amazing (though I’m sure in person it’s going to be lower quality than the video might make you believe.
It’s a nice change for Apple to start caring about webcams again, they have been atrocious until quite recently; it looks like some the M1/2 times are significantly better, particularly in low light, than the Intel machines ever had.
I do think Apple may have somewhat sherlocked reincubate with this the Continuity Camera stuff.
For anyone curious about iPhone compatibility
What does “sherlocked” mean in this context?
https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/
Thanks!
As a term it refers the phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants third-party software.
Before spotlight there was a built in search tool called Sherlock. In Nov 2001 Karelia release a companion application called Watson that used the plugin system of Sherlock to add web search functionality (e.g. movie times, prices for books off amazon, media search, etc). In Sept 2002 As part of OSX 10.2, Apple released Sherlock 3 which replicated almost all of the functionality of Watson.
Once a first party version was released the 3rd party tool it generally eliminates with original 3rd party tool.
Thank you - I didn’t use OS X before Spotlight and hadn’t heard of Sherlock.
I use Reincubate’s Camo as my webcam, and the camera on the back of my iPhone is substantially better than either of my other webcams (to say nothing of the garbage that Apple ships in their laptops). I am sorry that they got Sherlock’d, but that’s the way it goes.