Quick check last night. Thursday, April 2, 2020. Switzerland. Anyone wanting to buy a good webcam right now is facing empty shelves. All online retailers are completely sold out. There are still a few cheap models under 30 francs, but if you want HD or even 4K, you’ll have to be patient.
In the last few days, we’ve all participated in many video conferences. And we now know that our appearance – depending on lighting, distance, and camera positioning – looks, let’s say, suboptimal. Do I really have such a double chin? Is my nose really that big? And oh yes, I’ve been meaning to clean the camera lens on my laptop for months.
The classic setting of a video conference shows us at a laptop with headphones over or in our ears. The problem: the laptop, and thus the camera, is not at our eye level. This leads to the double chin effect, because the perspective from slightly below is simply unflattering. Additionally, many laptops don’t have top-quality cameras installed, resulting in blurry, low-contrast images. It’s fine for a one-off conference. In continuous operation, it’s unpleasant.
So a good webcam is needed, which can be mounted at the right height, for example on a tripod. The connection to the laptop is made wirelessly or via USB cable. But the thing is: besides toilet paper and dry yeast, webcams are also hard to come by at the moment.
The solution: we use the smartphone. I have an iPhone, which is equipped with absolutely fantastic cameras. I also have a tripod with an iPhone clamp, so it’s quickly mounted. All that’s missing is the connection to the Mac. This is quickly established via the app EpocCam.
For the smartphone, there’s a mobile camera app (iOS and Android). For Mac and Windows, there’s the counterpart, essentially the receiver, available for download on the homepage. Note that on Mac, additional drivers must be installed if you want to use the whole setup in third-party apps like Zoom, Skype, or BlueJeans.
Once everything is installed, start the app on the iPhone and adjust the camera image (front or back camera, although the back camera naturally provides a much better image and even has an auxiliary light that can be switched on). On the Mac, you then start Zoom and select EpocCam as the video source. Done. A high-quality video image for only $8.
