From the course: Improved Video Conferencing with Digital Cameras

Advantages of a digital camera over a built-in webcam

From the course: Improved Video Conferencing with Digital Cameras

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Advantages of a digital camera over a built-in webcam

- [Instructor] One of the very nice things about using a digital camera instead of a web cam is control, you have so much more control than you do with a built in web cam. Let me show you a few things. So I turned on the information display here, usually we turn that off for video conferences because we don't want this showing while we're talking with our friends or co-workers. But I turned it on just so I could show you some of the things that we have available to us using a digital camera. First of all, we can choose the lens that we want, in my case, on a Micro Four Thirds, I'm using a 17mm lens here. Which equals a 34mm lens in full frame, which is nice, it's wide, but it's not too wide, I can cover my backdrop, I don't have too much outside of it showing on the frame. I can go with manual focusing instead of pure auto focus and manual focus is very nice because you just set the focus on you, and then that way the focus doesn't change if you move around in the frame, it doesn't automatically go to the backdrop and then come back to you, and that's sort of aggravating and we don't have that at all. You just lock it in with manual focus, I love that. You can set the ISO to either auto or you can lock it down on 400, 800, whatever you want. So you have control over that. The aperture, you have control over the aperture. In my case, I have it at F2 here which is pretty wide, but that allows me to be nice and sharp, but it softens the backdrop a bit. Even though that backdrop is not too far behind me. And finally, I have exposure control. So, if the scene looks a little too bright or a little too dark, I can make that adjustment easily with the camera control. This is a big deal because a lot of times I feel like built in webcams present an image that's just too dark and they look kind of muddy and spooky and stuff. Here, I can brighten it up a bit so that I have nice presence, there's a nice sparkle in my eyes, and you know, everything looks cheery, so to speak. So, these are the things that I really like about working with a digital camera. Control, like I said at the top of this, control over all these different elements, it makes such a difference, set them the way that you want, they stay that way and then you can think about what you're saying instead of how you're looking.

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