Here, see for yourself. Would you want to chat with this face multiple times a week, every week? Okay, don’t answer that. But you get the picture. Luckily for me, I just found a way to improve the image quality using my Canon M50 mirrorless camera as a webcam instead of the one built into my laptop. Yeah, I know I said DSLR in the title, but it’s in the same space. Canon just launched a desktop app to turn your powerful camera with its significantly better lenses and image processors into a god-level webcam, and the results are stunning, even when the video stream is capped at 720p. Check this out: Not too shabby, huh? It’s pretty easy to set up, and it works with any web-based video conferencing app you choose to use, like Zoom or Google Meet. However, you do need one of the select Canon cameras on this list, and a Windows or Mac computer to use it. If your model is not supported, you can try this other method, which uses a different app for the process. Oh, and Fujifilm just released an app that works with the company’s cameras too. I should also mention that you’ll likely want to spend a few minutes setting up your camera so it captures a decent frame. Since DSLRs and mirrorless cameras aren’t tiny and light like external webcams that can be mounted above your screen, you’ll need to find a way to frame your face while also being able to see the other people on your group call. Here’s how I set up my camera in front of my monitor, so I could look at my screen and also have the lens frame me fairly naturally: With that, I’m now much happier with my camera feed and I look a lot less ghastly on screen. Hopefully I’ll also get booted off calls less often from here on out, but maybe that’s more a ‘me’ thing and not much of a picture quality issue. Get the app for Mac and Windows from this page. Update (May 29, 2020): Canon introduced a Mac version of its EOS Webcam utility software (it was previously only available for Windows); the post has been updated to reflect that.
