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I ran into that the other week as well. Get a UVC industrial camera with a M12 or CS mount lens to use as a webcam, most are better cameras than the "webcam" m

I ran into that the other week as well. Get a UVC industrial camera with a M12 or CS mount lens to use as a webcam, most are better cameras than the "webcam" models and not everyone has noticed UVC cameras _are_ webcams so the prices are normal. I grabbed one with an OV2710 sensor (does 1920x1080@30fps, 1280×720@60, and so on) and a 2.8-12mm CS lens for $65 that took a little over a week to arrive (I paid a slight premium from Amazon instead of Aliexpress because it looked like there was US stock... turned out to be the same seller shipping from the same place in China. Oh well). I'm trying to limp the hands-on portion of some sophomore-level EE courses to the end of the semester, so I've got mine mounted as an overhead camera for drawing/demonstrating/etc. the crap laptop built-in is plenty for facecam. The major problem is getting the video conferencing apps not to drop cameras to super-low quality, Zoom usually won't even use the full resolution mode of my built-in (except occasionally and apparently at random it decides to and changes the frame by selecting a 16x9 mode instead of the 4:3 it usually picks), and offers no real camera settings that I can find.

Arelius 7y ago
Neat, where did you order yours from? I've actually been looking for a sensor without a Bayer filter on it to use with a spectrometer, and this looks like the sort of thing that might be able to be used for that.
- vidanay 7y ago
  I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, but there are a lot of machine vision cameras available that do not have Bayer filters and are grey scale only. https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/cameras/ https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/cameras/ https://www.alliedvision.com/en/digital-industrial-camera-solutions.html https://www.alliedvision.com/en/digital-industrial-camera-so... These cameras most likely DO HAVE a NIR (near IR) filter on the sensors. You would need to check on specific models. Basler provides some documentation for removing the filter from specific camera models. https://www.baslerweb.com/en/sales-support/downloads/document-downloads/how-to-remove-the-ir-cut-filter-holder-from-a-basler-ace-camera/ https://www.baslerweb.com/en/sales-support/downloads/documen...
  - Arelius 7y ago
    They do look like exactly what I'm looking for, I'm just turned-off by the pricing model of "Contact Sales" When I'm just looking for a single camera to fit in my budget for personal projects.
    - vidanay 7y ago
      I've been a Basler customer for over 15 years. They're pretty good to work with.
    - PAPPPmAc 7y ago
      Basler has very well-made equipment and lovely software (Pylon) compared to most of what is available in the imaging world. If you want to see what things would actually cost at open market price, look at Edmund Optics listings for the cameras (eg. https://www.edmundoptics.com/f/basler-ace-usb-3.0-cameras/14831/ https://www.edmundoptics.com/f/basler-ace-usb-3.0-cameras/14... ), they are expensive by consumer standards but quite reasonable by industrial standards. Basler also tends to be pretty friendly with academics or other potential partners who might increase the value of their line, so it may be worth asking, depending on what sort of thing you're considering doing. Their area-scan features turned out to be unsuitable for what I'd hoped to use it for, but having looked at Pylon in determining that, I really wish I'd been able to, because the alternative I ended up with has been closer to "magnetized needle and steady hand" than "lovely API."
      - vidanay 6y ago
        I'm curious as to what you found to be unsuitable about the Basler cameras?
        PAPPPmAc 6y ago
        I needed triggering behavior that the restrictions on their Stacked ROI mode(s) didn't let me rig up. The project is doing a sort of frameless capture off a conventional sensor, so I was hoping to use Stacked ROI as a sort of threshold trigger for selective updates, but (for entirely good technical reasons) there are ordering, size, and number limitations on how the regions can be configured.
- PAPPPmAc 7y ago
  I got one of https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZQ6KVR/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZQ6KVR/ That webcamera_usb amazon storefront is actually ELP, who is a big player in that kind of lower-end industrial/security/for small volume integration camera modules. Also sells directly through their website, through Aliexpress, etc. They do have a few no-bayer black and white options. Mine shipped from Shenzen via Hong Kong, but (now that I check tracking) took exactly a week to get to a midsize city in the US. The camera is adequate (I've done a fair amount of computational photography work recently, overly opinionated to follow), it's not hitting anything like the advertised high frame rate/low res modes in guvcview, but is making the 30-60fps higher res modes that matter for webcam use. It's USB2 and enumerated as UVC 1.0 so I can't say I'm surprised. The crop changes in somewhat surprising ways among the modes, I think the readout does a mixture of crop and binning or line skipping. It's not a nice Basler module or anything, but it costs less than 20% what the nominally-comparable offering from "good brands" would. The lens is ...eh, I have noticeable barrel distortion and vignetting, but its clear, doesn't have the annoying color corruption you sometimes see in cheap C/CS lenses, and the FoV is nice for webcam duty. It's a damn slight better than the old PS3 eye I was getting by with until it showed up, and being able to easily manually manipulate zoom/focus/aperture instead of hoping the auto does something good is great.

Arelius 7y ago

Neat, where did you order yours from? I've actually been looking for a sensor without a Bayer filter on it to use with a spectrometer, and this looks like the sort of thing that might be able to be used for that.

vidanay 7y ago
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for, but there are a lot of machine vision cameras available that do not have Bayer filters and are grey scale only. https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/cameras/ https://www.baslerweb.com/en/products/cameras/ https://www.alliedvision.com/en/digital-industrial-camera-solutions.html https://www.alliedvision.com/en/digital-industrial-camera-so... These cameras most likely DO HAVE a NIR (near IR) filter on the sensors. You would need to check on specific models. Basler provides some documentation for removing the filter from specific camera models. https://www.baslerweb.com/en/sales-support/downloads/document-downloads/how-to-remove-the-ir-cut-filter-holder-from-a-basler-ace-camera/ https://www.baslerweb.com/en/sales-support/downloads/documen...
- Arelius 7y ago
  They do look like exactly what I'm looking for, I'm just turned-off by the pricing model of "Contact Sales" When I'm just looking for a single camera to fit in my budget for personal projects.
  - vidanay 7y ago
    I've been a Basler customer for over 15 years. They're pretty good to work with.
  - PAPPPmAc 7y ago
    Basler has very well-made equipment and lovely software (Pylon) compared to most of what is available in the imaging world. If you want to see what things would actually cost at open market price, look at Edmund Optics listings for the cameras (eg. https://www.edmundoptics.com/f/basler-ace-usb-3.0-cameras/14831/ https://www.edmundoptics.com/f/basler-ace-usb-3.0-cameras/14... ), they are expensive by consumer standards but quite reasonable by industrial standards. Basler also tends to be pretty friendly with academics or other potential partners who might increase the value of their line, so it may be worth asking, depending on what sort of thing you're considering doing. Their area-scan features turned out to be unsuitable for what I'd hoped to use it for, but having looked at Pylon in determining that, I really wish I'd been able to, because the alternative I ended up with has been closer to "magnetized needle and steady hand" than "lovely API."
    - vidanay 6y ago
      I'm curious as to what you found to be unsuitable about the Basler cameras?
      - PAPPPmAc 6y ago
        I needed triggering behavior that the restrictions on their Stacked ROI mode(s) didn't let me rig up. The project is doing a sort of frameless capture off a conventional sensor, so I was hoping to use Stacked ROI as a sort of threshold trigger for selective updates, but (for entirely good technical reasons) there are ordering, size, and number limitations on how the regions can be configured.
PAPPPmAc 7y ago
I got one of https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZQ6KVR/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MZQ6KVR/ That webcamera_usb amazon storefront is actually ELP, who is a big player in that kind of lower-end industrial/security/for small volume integration camera modules. Also sells directly through their website, through Aliexpress, etc. They do have a few no-bayer black and white options. Mine shipped from Shenzen via Hong Kong, but (now that I check tracking) took exactly a week to get to a midsize city in the US. The camera is adequate (I've done a fair amount of computational photography work recently, overly opinionated to follow), it's not hitting anything like the advertised high frame rate/low res modes in guvcview, but is making the 30-60fps higher res modes that matter for webcam use. It's USB2 and enumerated as UVC 1.0 so I can't say I'm surprised. The crop changes in somewhat surprising ways among the modes, I think the readout does a mixture of crop and binning or line skipping. It's not a nice Basler module or anything, but it costs less than 20% what the nominally-comparable offering from "good brands" would. The lens is ...eh, I have noticeable barrel distortion and vignetting, but its clear, doesn't have the annoying color corruption you sometimes see in cheap C/CS lenses, and the FoV is nice for webcam duty. It's a damn slight better than the old PS3 eye I was getting by with until it showed up, and being able to easily manually manipulate zoom/focus/aperture instead of hoping the auto does something good is great.