I’m considering returning this product because I know its potential and the cost behind it. Let’s start with where this product differs from normal webcams, and how this makes this a very strange product to begin with.
This camera’s sensor is larger than a normal webcam’s, and yet much much smaller than a normal camera’s. You might say this isnt an issue because your phone and most laptops have camera’s much smaller than this one and plenty of them do fine.
This. is the only problem with this camera, and its a major one. Your phone’s front facing camera works by taking the worst image you’ve ever seen, if you’d been able to see the raw to begin with, and using a lot of guess work and processing to get the image to what you see on screen.
This processing includes color correcting, highly advanced noise removal, and in some cases, complete pixel synthesis to create the images we see today. This is not to say those sensors are bad, just that they are essentially all software.
Webcam’s feed on this same design, in that they take what should be a terrible messed up image, and use insane amounts of software on every frame of video to ensure that the photo that comes out might look blurry, out of focus, or like all the detail in the worst cases, is gone.
but the image is noise free and in all likelyhood the best-case scenario out of these cheap sensors as they can squeeze out in hopes you enjoy it regardless of the horrible quality per bandwidth ratio now that USB3 has been a thing for so long.
Big Camera’s, DSLR sensors are of such a greater scale that much less of these various software tricks are actually necessary as they are consuming so much more light and have such better understanding of the raw input due to this amount of light, that they can see much closer to how the human eye sees, and in some cases, much much better as we can control the “Brain” that processes that light into an image.
Pulling color and dynamic range out of places an eye would stumble in dark scenarios. However because of this lower processing, a DSLR may initially appear to produce a noisier image in low light scenarios in all but the best of cases.
Good news with a DSLR~! You can take its raw output from the sensor and throw that into some video or photo editing program and apply those same post processing effects phone’s use to a finer degree and produce an unparalleled image.
It’s range is so much higher that it is worth this trade off. This camera. Falls into an uncomfortable middle ground between these two, and because of it you have to do something crazy to make it work, so crazy in fact that I am considering returning it.
Let me explain. See this webcam’s sensor and range might be better than most webcams but. this says very little, due to the camera being so lacking in post processing, and its range not being high enough to make up for it.
Much of what you can do with this camera in POST will make it look like a normal webcam without extreme amounts of light. To be clear, I am not talking DSLR amounts of light, it is much higher even than that.
Where something like a Logitech webcam may lower its post processing as more light is introduced into the image, this camera has very little from the start, meaning right at the start, a lot of light is needed, and unlike a DSLR, its sensor cannot compensate for gain, at all.
The moment even a little gain in the sensor is added, noise will be noticeable, and colors start to bleach out. I have an 1100 lumen bulb on my left, a 1600 lumen tv backlight, a 1600 lumen desklight, a 1600 lumen bedlight, a 1100 lumen bulb on my right, and a 1050 lumen bulb behind me.
The image, is unusable for any description of recording. There is noise everywhere, and it is unfixable with manual settings. in a small room. Through my testing, I can drop exposure to -4 maximum with high gain (Below medium for this sensor, there is lots of noise) (-13 is the fastest exposure setting for the camera) This should imply that even with a focused bulb at 2800 lumen’s the best I could do is drop exposure one more notch, or remove the gain setting (This camera’s “Exposure Times” are doubled.
Dropping one notch does nothing unless at the slowest exposure speeds, these means the software is lying to you) Also, noise and the “Gain” setting are not completely related (A slow exposure will still produce noise in the image even with gain disabled) Implying again that “Gain” may not be an appropriate word for what the software is actually doing, unless the sensor is noisy by default which by is disproven by watching videos of people with expensive video lighting.
The above means the best combination for removing noise from the base image is to lower exposure to a -5/-6 with 0 gain for this sensor, naturally, without post processing (The least amount of post process work needed) Unfortunately, I have nearly 2200 lumens pointed at my face, and I cannot use these settings without high amounts of gain unless I put both.