Light is the reason good webcams are not built-in. With still pictures you can expose for longer and/or use multiple low quality sensors to build up enough inf

Light is the reason good webcams are not built-in. With still pictures you can expose for longer and/or use multiple low quality sensors to build up enough information for software to construct a higher quality image. With video you cannot expose for longer, and software building a picture would need to be near real-time. So problem #1 is light... you need to get a lot more light into the sensor, but the laptop is thin and optics are large (and as glass and light, they cannot be made much smaller). I have a good set up, but the thing I tell people who want to replicate it: Buy lights before you buy a camera... your built-in cam may be sufficient if you are well lit. Or even cheaper, if you have a desk facing a wall... there's no light source, so turn it around or face a window. Failing improved lighting fixing it... you need a good sensor and a lens that lets in a lot of light, especially if you are going to be in a poorly lit space. Sony produced the absolutely perfect form factor for this... https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-cameras/ilce-qx1-body-kit https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/interchangeable-lens-came... It's basically a sensor in a minimal body that you can mount a standard lens on and then place on a tripod (which opens up any mount / arm thing). Why then is it not popular? It came too early, and wasn't quite ready for always streaming video... both the software in this older revision and the hardware have issues (cooling the sensor for constant video is the problem here as it wasn't anticipated to be used to stream for 10+ hours per day and struggles beyond 30 minutes as I understand). Additionally it only has a micro-USB connection, no HDMI or USB-C... and it really needs a single USB-C that can both power and handle the video. Things it doesn't need: battery or flash - but I guess keeping them means it plausibly could be a stills camera if needed. If that format included the equivalent of the Elgato CamLink HDMI to USB-C device and priced around $300 then I think it would be a wild success. The BOM suggests this is possible. Sony already have a lot of the pro-streaming market along with Panasonic, but if Sony made a specialist product for home streaming then I would buy it instantly... as it would liberate my a7rii from the job.