
Imaging Edge Webcam - woldemariam
https://support.d-imaging.sony.co.jp/app/webcam/en/
======
murgindrag
... and I'd love to have this if it just modified the firmware of my camera to
act as a webcam native webcam.

As is, this is a cumbersome kludge.

Perhaps future cameras will have this option. But I doubt it. My expectation
is that the camera market will continue to shrink as companies like Sony have
completely missed the concepts of ecosystems, open standards, compatibility,
and people wanting to do anything Sony didn't predict. At the same time, the
imaging market will continue to grow with lower-quality but standard,
compatible devices like cell phones and webcams.

It also leaves most A-mount users out. Even cameras one generation back are
left out (A99, A77). Sony basically shat on its entire userbase in the move to
E-mount. Perhaps Canon, Nikon, or Panasonic will pick them up. But I doubt
that too.

There's an increasingly narrow niche which big cameras are forcing themselves
into. Older users aren't always moving from dying mounts. Newer users expect
apps and interoperability. I'm wondering how much longer this whole house-of-
cards will last.

Olympus just gave up claiming "market conditions." The problem is always
outside....

~~~
strogonoff
> My expectation is that the camera market will continue to shrink as
> companies like Sony have completely missed the concepts of ecosystems, open
> standards, compatibility, and people wanting to do anything Sony didn't
> predict. … Newer users expect apps and interoperability.

I think Sigma is getting it right. FP can natively act as a regular webcam.
From get go, they are publishing an SDK for developers and 3D models of the
body and all accessories as STEP files for accessory makers. Frankly, their
approach is a breath of fresh air.

~~~
murgindrag
Sigma seems to get everything right.

They're cameras are a bit niche. That makes sense for a minor player, but I'm
not in their niche.

I think if they made one a bit more mainstream, with:

* a native mirrorless mount * converters to take A-mount, F-Mount, and EF-Mount lenses natively (and perhaps more)

they'd sell like hotcakes, though. Sigma just might do it. Even out of feeling
bad for Alpha users left out in the cold by Sony, and be surprised when people
buy it.

~~~
strogonoff
Frankly I’d be more than fine if Sigma did not spend effort on adding another
mount (M lenses, EF lenses can be adapted to L) and instead focused on their
full-frame Foveon body or came up with something else crazy and
uncompromising. I love to bits their maverick approach.

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thunfisch
Soo many questions.

Why is this not a firmware addition? Why is this windows only? Why the
ILCE-5100, but not the ILCE-6000 which is _super_ popular? Why is the
PlayMemories App stuff still a unusable mess?

Sorry, was maybe a nice idea in the beginning, but the execution is
disappointing. I'll stick to my capture cards and stay on the lookout for a
proper camera. The zcam e2-m4 is looking better every day I have to work with
this stuff...

~~~
dimatura
No answers here... for me the meta-question is why are they so bad at user-
facing software? (I don't really know about the quality of the firmware, it
gets the job done, I guess). I like their cameras -- I own an NEX5N, a6000 and
an RX100 -- but interacting with their mobile and desktop apps is always such
a terrible experience.

~~~
m463
Hardware companies never do software well. It's a freebie.

Strangely, some are starting to do software better -- so they can monetize
data they collect.

~~~
starky
I wouldn't say never. But it really comes down to how a business views their
product. If they view it as a hardware product that is supported by some
software, then it will be shit. If they view it as a whole end-to-end solution
where the entire experience is the product, then they will more often do it
well.

Photography is weird in that the people still buying cameras pretty much just
want the same old Canon/Nikon controls and menus that they are used to, and
have a workflow already in place. It is really difficult to get these people
out of that mindset even though it would be amazing if you were able to take a
photo, it would get automatically uploaded to the cloud, where you can access
and edit/publish it through any device. Even though this would benefit a lot
of professionals, many wouldn't want to change their workflow to allow this.

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novok
At this point I would just buy a $12 HDMI to USB dongle and side step the need
for any of these apps. Way better, no new software required, no OS specifics.

Ex:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daS5RHVAl2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daS5RHVAl2U)

~~~
Larrikin
This didn't exist at the beginning of the pandemic.

The entire setup for mounting my fairly expensive A6000 Sony camera was a
little under 75 bucks except for the hdmi to usb dongle that shot up hundreds
of dollars from its fairly expensive base. I was totally on the fence for
months about buying, thinking maybe I could get into twitch or something to
justify it since the price wasn't just totally out of reach. It seemed like
newer models had work arounds and I was just going to have to bite the bullet
for being an early mirrorless adapter.

Then those dongles came out. Work perfectly for every use case a regular
consumer would need one for.

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djabatt
I own Sony cameras and like them, but all the software they make to connect to
the camera is bad period. They should just enable the camera to act as a
webcam via firmware update.

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heavymark
Was pretty surprised no mac option or even a timeline for mac availability but
looking at the resolution supported which isn’t even HD seems we are not
missing out on much and more just a feature that want to be able to say they
have like the competitors even if not useable.

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numpad0
SIGMA fp works as a UVC camera, out of the box and without special drivers[0]

[0]: [https://blog.sigmaphoto.com/2020/the-sigma-fp-as-a-live-
stre...](https://blog.sigmaphoto.com/2020/the-sigma-fp-as-a-live-stream-web-
camera/)

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supernova87a
Aside from the lens, sensor size, and the huge amount of power to run a
consumer camera compared to a webcam on your laptop, are there major
differences in the output format or video processing? Turning one into the
other always seems like such a big deal/problem.

~~~
numpad0
Sensor driver ICs operate in different modes for still and video, so probably
developer culture between different trains of cameras diverged due to that,
earlier in the technology.

Cameras are also still a bag of trickster type computer, lots of ASICs
talking. “Main CPU” is probably still a thing. So disturbing the path from
light to FAT file entry may or may not open some can of worms.

Lastly I can’t imagine a team of Linux hackers in a large Japanese corporate
writing UVC gadget driver for company platform... entertainment value and
frictionless operation are very neglected/disincentivized part of engineering
in the country.

Maybe the second point is the most relevant. They’re not designed to encode
and export video to PC and that itself is a challenge.

~~~
supernova87a
Ah, super interesting and that's what I was curious about.

Yes, I imagined that there were a lot of written specs requested from the
group responsible for building this app/interface...

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MR4D
If the raspberry pi with its new 12MP sensor could run as a webcam, someone
could make a ton of money packaging them up for HN users.

=========

EDIT - for a Mac

~~~
franga2000
I don't see why it couldn't. There's already a UVC USB Gadget driver in
mainline Linux and the rest is just a matter of beating the video stream into
submission using Gstreamer or something similar. But just the BOM alone would
cost well over 100€, which can usually get you a used compact camera and one
of those dir cheap capture cards everyone is talking about these days and is
probably comparable in quality but actually has things like autofocus and a
decent zoom range.

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LargoLasskhyfv
/me pats his antique PowerSchrott with CHDK...

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bitxbit
No mic so it’s sort of half baked.

~~~
VectorLock
Camera mics are trash, if you care enough to use a Sony camera as a webcam you
probably have a microphone you were already using.

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seaghost
Unfortunately, Windows only.

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hendry
Prays for Archlinux support.

~~~
franga2000
Looking at the camera list and the fact it doesn't need new firmware, they're
probably just using the existing tethering preview functionality.

The same can be achieved with gphoto2 piped to v4l2loopback (using ffmpeg to
transcode). Something like:

    
    
        $ sudo modprobe v4l2loopback exclusive_caps=1 
        
        $ gphoto2 --stdout --capture-movie | ffmpeg -i - -vcodec rawvideo -pix_fmt yuv420p -threads 0 -f v4l2 /dev/video0

~~~
swanee
I think this is essentially the same thing Nikon is doing as well with the
beta webcam utility.

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29athrowaway
Take the Sony logo, cover the lower half and invert it. Don't comment on your
findings.

