> So there is a market gap between so-so webcams for $100-200 and a full-blown setup with a mirrorless camera...
Don't know where you can buy a readymade one. However, if you don't mind DIY, try our free software project showmewebcam. It uses a Pi and its HQ sensor and some software glue to make a USB webcam [1]. You'll have a wide selection of affordable lenses [2] and cases [3] that people cook up for their personal use. It's so much fun experimenting with them for different use cases.
Last time I commented here, there have been criticisms about the quality of the lens that the Pi foundation offer. We have discovered many other decent alternative lenses that help remedy the quality and distortion issue of the stock lenses. An example of a good accumulation of knowledge as we have more users and people paying more attention is the commonlands lens guide [4].
The software is very actively developed and we have a pretty supportive developers community. We try our best to have good software engineering practices so we can maintain this project in the long run. The software is designed to be modularized. It is easy to understand, build, and improve upon. I have a lot of fun building it - in fact I just finished a 5 hours coding session to address comments on the Pull Requests that I started earlier. I hope eventually it's not just another pi project for fun, the firmware has the potential to make this solution more powerful than the best webcam that money can buy, just like how openwrt is for routers.
I still have yet to record a decent demo video to demonstrate the power of the Picam but there is just too many things and too little time to get it done. Oh well...
I've been using this for a whole now and really happy. Looking over the repo it seems there has been some software improvements so I will upgrade mine now - saving the settings will be very useful as it's too dark for me by default. Thank you!
Regarding the lens, I'm using the '6mm 3MP Wide Angle Lens for Raspberry Pi HQ Camera' and I have zero problems with it. I'm hardly moving in the way I use it as a simple webcam so I have no problem with staying in focus and I just don't get what a few people are saying about distortion, I must be blind. I looked up one of the recommended alternatives, the 'Fujinon HF9HA-1B 9mm 1.4', I can only find it pre-owned on ebay shipped from China for £70 (+ a load of tax I am sure). I will happily stick with my regular lens.
>I have no problem with staying in focus and I just don't get what a few people are saying about distortion, I must be blind.
If you point it to a piece of rectangular paper you'll see the distortion. In the commonlands review link above, Max pointed that out with a picture as well.
For a few weeks now I've been doing something similar, using a Pi + v2 camera module instead of the HQ¹. This gives me an affordable(and hackable, to boot) webcam of a surprisingly decent quality with 60fps at 720p, which most consumer webcams can't do at all, since apparently no one cares about framerates(I have niche reasons for caring).
¹ It's also over a network with uv4l because the v2 720p 60fps mode isn't supported by the uvc gadget stuff. It's a bit of a shame, but I haven't had problems with the network transfer. The biggest issue with all this is that my Zero will occasionally overheat and the video will start freezing up, and I don't have much of a solution besides "don't put it in any kind of case".
Don't know where you can buy a readymade one. However, if you don't mind DIY, try our free software project showmewebcam. It uses a Pi and its HQ sensor and some software glue to make a USB webcam [1]. You'll have a wide selection of affordable lenses [2] and cases [3] that people cook up for their personal use. It's so much fun experimenting with them for different use cases.
Last time I commented here, there have been criticisms about the quality of the lens that the Pi foundation offer. We have discovered many other decent alternative lenses that help remedy the quality and distortion issue of the stock lenses. An example of a good accumulation of knowledge as we have more users and people paying more attention is the commonlands lens guide [4].
The software is very actively developed and we have a pretty supportive developers community. We try our best to have good software engineering practices so we can maintain this project in the long run. The software is designed to be modularized. It is easy to understand, build, and improve upon. I have a lot of fun building it - in fact I just finished a 5 hours coding session to address comments on the Pull Requests that I started earlier. I hope eventually it's not just another pi project for fun, the firmware has the potential to make this solution more powerful than the best webcam that money can buy, just like how openwrt is for routers.
I still have yet to record a decent demo video to demonstrate the power of the Picam but there is just too many things and too little time to get it done. Oh well...
1. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam
2. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/wiki/Lenses
3. https://github.com/showmewebcam/showmewebcam/wiki/Cases
4. https://commonlands.com/blogs/camera-engineering/raspi-video...