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Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by pi-rat on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @10:31AM (#21525212)
Who would you prefer doing daily standups or long stretches of remote pair programming with?

The one with the low resolution, low contrast, washed out, low fps video that makes it hard to read emotion or even detect where his/her attention is?

Or the one with sharp features, pleasant colour rendition, high resolution, and maybe even a pretty bokeh in the background?

Humans love pretty pictures. See OKCupids[1] image analysis vs attractiveness for example. Shallow DOF = More attractive.

See also hanselman's[2] thoughts on the matter of having a high quality setup for remote work.

[1]: https://theblog.okcupid.com/dont-be-ugly-by-accident-b378f26... [2]: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/GoodBetterBestCreatingTheUlti...

Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by the_hoser on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @10:59AM (#21525564)
Neither. We usually turn the cameras off to hide the fact that none of us got dressed that morning.
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by coding123 on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:13PM (#21528194)
We turn all that off because inevitably someone starts saying: I can't hear you guys, it's coming in robot voice, can you turn off the screen/video share?
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by pc86 on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:28PM (#21528389)
It sounds like they don't have adequate internet to be working from home.
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by draugadrotten on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @03:23PM (#21529067)
From home? I'm trying to work from whatever airport I am at. Video isn't that important but solid audio really is needed.
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by dpkonofa on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @02:35PM (#21528487)
>the low resolution, low contrast, washed out, low fps video that makes it hard to read emotion or even detect where his/her attention is?

This is totally disingenuous. We're not comparing a 120p camera to a 1080p camera. We're comparing a sharp camera with great color rendition to a slightly higher resolution of the same camera.

Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by aantix on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @11:17AM (#21525811)
Slightly offtopic - are there any webcams out there that can provide a shallow depth of field in realtime?
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by sbr464 on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @11:38AM (#21526055)
You can use a Black Magic Design Web Presenter which allows connecting 2 pro camera/lens setups via HDMI/SDI, and XLR mic inputs. It shows up as a USB webcam like normal.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicwebprese...

Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by bufferoverflow on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @01:17PM (#21527427)
You can turn a Canon/Nikon DSLR into a webcam. Using SparkoCam.

So theoretically you can get a cheap old T3i + 50mm/1.8 and have a crazy good webcam with near-cinematic quality.

Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by spac on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @01:27PM (#21527563)
I was very excited by the idea. Ironically, it's only available on Windows.
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by ants_a on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @04:41PM (#21529917)
You can do that on Linux too:

    modprobe v4l2loopback
    gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f v4l2 /dev/video0
Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by pi-rat on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @12:01PM (#21526361)
Not any good one that does it in hardware out of the box that I know of. There are mod kits for CS lenses for c920/930/brio, if you can live with a tighter shot. If you've an compatible RX100/A6000 or similar laying around, then an Elgato Cam Link like hanselman's setup above might be the easiest option.

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/cam-link-4k (1/5 the price of the blackmagic device above/below)

There's also some software "solutions", but I've no idea how good they are, probably not iPhone portrait mode quality.

Re:16-inch MacBook Pro by Aeolun on Wednesday November 13, 2019 @08:08PM (#21531733)
I think the issue is that in most cases the problem isn’t the webcam, it’s the network that is carrying the stream.