The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt.
Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it would appear that owning something that could physically do what you want it to is only half the battle for numerous reasons, and in this case it would have been my government demanding extra money to 'unlock' this functionality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...
My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.
The tribunal decided that Jaffa Cakes were cakes because when they go stale they go hard like a cake whereas a biscuit tends to go soft when it goes stale.
Walkers lost the case.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/walkers-min...
Nobody should have been getting their "news" from Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, or Rachel Maddow.
IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.
I've (somewhat sardonically) wondered if they're both false flag operations. Imagine CNBC started with the idea "we'll parody the left to make them seem radical and unreasonable" but accidentally developed a huge following who didn't get the joke.
> IMO they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves news without putting entertainment in front.
Agreed but the average person wouldn't understand that Entertainment News was different than News. The problem goes deeper. I despair.
Meanwhile, OAN sued Maddow for calling them Russian propaganda and her lawyers responded by flexing, doubling down with receipts under oath. Signing up for consequences if they were wrong, and receiving none because they were correct.
So no, these are not the same, and anyone who argues that they are immediately reveals themselves to be partisan hacks.
[Judge Smith] found OAN and its parent company were unlikely to prevail on the defamation claim because the challenged speech was not a statement of fact and the context of Maddow’s show made it likely her audience would expect her to make political opinions.
Putting the details of the court case aside, the judge is clearly saying that he does not believe that Maddow's show was "news" and it shouldn't be treated as such. That's what GP was pointing out: the defense of being "not news", which both shows have in common.
> the context provided by Maddow’s commentary before and after she made the statement disclosed all relevant facts and contained colorful language.
If you listen to the clip in question, you'll observe that Maddow explains the facts, makes an exclamation, and then explains the facts. The complaint here only works if you clip chimp the exclamation. Contrast this with the complaint against Carlson, where he engages in what was by his own admission sustained deception.
They are literally the same with one case having a text message.
They are both not news and if you think that one and not the other is news than you might be the partisan you are trying to label others as.
I think the 'average' person thinks of 'Entertainment News' as celebrity gossip, e.g., E! News[0] etc. Telling them the entertainment news/opinion/commentary they watch is not actually 'News' but is entertainment "news" doesn't compute
That feels like a fairly reasonable assertion for anybody watching Tucker Carlson.
[1] https://popehat.substack.com/p/fox-news-v-fox-entertainment-...
Let's say you were involved in a freak hunting accident and shot somebody, but you were never charged with any crimes.
If the Fox News "hard news" program (if such a thing exists) said "skrebbel is a murderer" that is more likely to be understood to be a statement of fact, asserting something in a legalistic sense. [IANAL, but I think even this is unlikely to be defamation, although there is a somewhat similar case where ABC settled with Donald Trump over saying he was "liable for rape"]
If somebody on Tucker Carlson Tonight said "You can't trust anything that skrebbel guy says, he's a murderer!" that is more likely to be understood as an opinion based on disclosed facts, not a fact. That person isn't asserting that you committed or were convicted of a specific crime of murder, but rather that you killed somebody and it might be your fault. On a show were people are arguing and exchanging opinionated views, viewers should understand that these things are opinions. And therefore that's not defamation, because it's an opinion.
I am deeply offended and contemplating to sue you for defamation.
Yes, you can be enjoined from using your own name.
This is not that case.
In popular media when "The Colbert Report" was broadcast, Steven Colbert was very open about the fact that he was playing a character on TV who happened to have the same name as him.
In the case of "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert," he is not playing the character from the Colbert Report.
The very specific bit was from after the 2017 election when Trump was elected. Steven Colbert did a bit, in character as "Steven Colbert", with props from "The Colbert Report", and a guest appearance from Jon Stewart. (Because the main focus of "The Colbert Report" was to mock conservatives.) Otherwise, everything Steven Colbert (the person) does on "The Tonight Show featuring Steven Colbert" does not involve the "Steven Colbert" character from "The Colbert Report."
Craig Kilborn was able to leave the Daily Show and take bits like 5 questions with him. However, CC was a much smaller network at the time.
It would make sense why he’s never even jokingly gone back into that character on his new show.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandco...
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43805741-daylight-robber...
Hah.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-c...
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2017/02/snuggies-ar...
The tax on popcorn is also totally crazy. "Unpackaged and unlabelled popcorn with salt and spices is categorised as 'namkeen' and taxed at 5%. Pre-packed and labelled ready-to-eat popcorn attracts a 12% GST rate. Caramelized popcorn with added sugar is taxed at a higher rate of 18%."
Raw ingredients are taxed less than ready-to-eat or sugar-coated ultra-processed good. And I'm totally ok with that.
So I looked it up. And yes, that is exactly the case, and it's an absurd situation that is causing massive headaches.
[1]: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/10/time-compan...
"It's a nice story and the court won't prevent you from telling it, but legally these beings in that story are clearly NOT humans"
Hilarious.
https://www.ft.com/content/5af5b182-349a-4a25-b4fb-4551908f2...
https://www.ft.com/content/a6a54008-6059-4052-99ae-282f148f2...
https://www.ft.com/content/a8d6413e-1184-4f89-9bcb-4f6cb8d7a...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43805741-daylight-robber...
Most of their equipment is made in Portugal and finished in Germany, with whatever WTO agreed % of value added that allows them to stamp "Made In Germany" on the goods.
So for US markets they issues a series of lenses that were more fully finished in the Portuguese factory such that they could be stamped "Made In Portugal".
This makes it a jacket, and jackets are taxed at a lower rate than shirts.
The same shenanigans more or less work for most types of taxation. There’s always an angle to reduce or even eliminate taxes, unless you work on salary or for wages. It’s clear who the system is built for lol.
15% of a $33 shirt is $5
5% of a $33 jacket is $1.65
...it's definitely gamesmanship but if you squint you can see where it comes from.
How much tax for a laser printer? Well it depends how fast it prints:
Up to 14 pages/Minute: 25,00 € Up to 39 pages/Minute: 50,00 € From 40 pages/Minute: 87,50 €
For every storage medium this tax has been paid, because of the possibility of making a pirated copy. Technically we all paid already to make pirates copies.
It has upsides like having an army for defense, roads and other common things. But don’t forget the primary nature and motivation behind it. They just want your money, and your offspring to please them in various ways.
Isn't that true though?
The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box.
So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay commercial licenses for your cameras.
Hah.
Do you have a link? Could only find a 2010 article[1] that appears to have been debunked by MPEG-LA themselves (per the updates in the blog post).
[1] https://www.osnews.com/story/23236/why-our-civilizations-vid...
From Nikon D500 User Manual [0], page 22:
From Nikon Z6/Z7 User Manual [1], page 236:
Sony has a similar note for A9 [3], but can be grouped under here, which is almost the same:
AVC Patent Portfolio License: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (“AVC VIDEO”) AND/ OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON - COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND / OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. S EE http://www.mpegla.com
From Canon R5 User Manual [2], page 939:
“This product is licensed under AT&T patents for the MPEG-4 standard and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the AT&T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video. No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4 standard.”
THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD (''AVC VIDEO'') AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM
[0]: https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive3/4qUKV00WD5Bh04RdeC...
[1]:https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive5/8Yygr00R9Ojb058Kwq...
[2]: https://cam.start.canon/en/C003/manual/c003.pdf
[3]: https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/1830/v1/en/contents/TP0002351...
It seems the one caveat, per the Engadget article, is directly distributing AVC video to end users (I suppose like a direct download link on a personal site) is what requires a license but that license is free to obtain.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2010-05-04-know-your-rights-h-264-p...
There are other license models, which is about manufacturers, publishers and TV stations, etc.
But nowhere it says "there's a free license for these cases, just get it from here".
This all looks like a rabbit hole for me.
Similar to software that is free or low cost for non-commercial use only, even with the same functionality.
The good news is typically nobody will chase you down on this unless you are making real money. The bad news is, once you are, they will.
> About using MP3 files
> This product has been licensed for nonprofit use. This product has not been licensed for commercial purposes (for profit-making use), […]. You need to acquire the corresponding licenses for such uses. For details, see […]
Best use an open audio codec instead.
You will still need a separate license (or multiple separate licenses) for commercial purposes.
Music licensing is unbelievably complicated
Not getting caught for some time doesn't count either. You'll pay retroactively, with some interest, probably.
Licensing page is at [0]. Considering the previous shenanigans they pulled against open video and audio formats in the past [1], these guys are not sleeping around. These guys call people for patent pools in a format, and license these pools as format licenses.
[0]: https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/avc-h-264/avc-h-264-licen...
Can you show a single court case or even a press release where someone using a legit licensed product bought on the open market was sued for codec patent infringement?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....
Edit: Missed the last part where you said the same
You license the right to use the patent pool for commercial purposes, not the device itself.
What about if you're a YouTuber, surely they don't pay?
E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/
But of course as you say it's largely semantics.
This assumes everyone acts in good faith.
A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'"
Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."
It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations
Now, it might be reasonable to remove this exemption, but the only way it's a "gunshow" loophole is that gun shows are a place where gun fans wanting to buy are going to meet gun fans wanting to sell.
Making it trivial for someone to do firearms checks seems like an easy thing that everyone should support, but alas no one in power seems to actually want such a thing.
If we negotiate and make a binding deal, I need to believe you will hold your end of the agreement.
> You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.
POSIWID
I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.
The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.
But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.
Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.
Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile.
If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do.
Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.
I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.
This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines.
The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.
Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.
There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.
Still not a fan, and probably the EUCD makes most of this useless.
I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.
My personal favourite example is when the Irish Supreme Court determined that Subway bread was not bread: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-ru... (Bread had advantageous treatment for VAT purposes, but Subway's 'bread' has too much sugar to qualify.)
There's also the famous Jaffa Cake case, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status , but I think the Subway one has an extra element of absurdity because it went all the way to the _Supreme Court_.
Because it is not. Cola is not water either.
That is an acceptable position and you will likely nor require further investigation as long as the criticism remains vague and is offset by positive sentiment. I too love the EU.
After a few months of this they received a phone call on their landline warning them that such public expressions are inappropriate and that there could be consequences should they not find a new hobby.
I too love the EU but I loved it much more 15 years ago.
But tons of money coming in from the EU. I can imagine a lot of public quiet, private ‘angst’ about the kind of situation you’re describing.
Wild guess - Romania? (If not Bulgaria)
Without the EU, there would be a worse patchwork of rules and exceptions.
This issue does not appear weird.
There is some legally technical difference between a video camera and a still photo camera. Probably different tariffs or something. Not weird at all and it is not uncommon anywhere in the world for different classes och products to be classified differently, infallibly because of industry lobbyism to reduce their costs or to reduce their prices for their specific product.
The manufacturer chose to limit the product for the consumer for their own economic benefit. Nothing is stopping them from playing ball except their own profit motive.
It is I the customer who will pay the tariffs (they are always paid by the importer) - the manufacturer gets the same amount per unit.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2016-00127...
If there is one thing the EU has absolutely achieved it is to massively reduce and harmonize tariffs and trade rules, and make the rules less susceptible to the whims of political favor and lobbying of local industry.
To a (considerable) extent yes. But it appears to be going backwards - from 2021 online shops have had to know and apply VAT for a product to the buyers country, not the country in which they are based, and thresholds for charging and submitting this VAT were eliminated. Basically handing over more online retail to the likes of Amazon.
Different products have different VAT rates in each country, the only thing that can't be discriminated on is the (EU) country of origin. This is still absolutely susceptible to the whims of political favour and local industry lobbying. A recent example from Finland: https://yle.fi/a/74-20087643
[Admittedly I'm unlikely to be buying chocolate and crisps online from Germany, but if I were a German seller needs to charge the correct rate of VAT for each, which will likely be different from Germany and every other EU country]
I'd still have to pay tax on it, though. IIRC there wasn't any personal exemption amount if you'd left Canada for under 24 hours, unlike they have now. Sometimes they'd just wave you through even when trying to declare something, which was always a nice little bonus savings.
No, I think it's to protect the European producer of devices that can do more from being out-competed by imports.
https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/eu-to-hit-some-di...
Tariffs around the world have weird stuff like that. Very little to do with the EU itself. Expect a lot more weird things like that to happen in the US now with the new US government implementing new tariffs.
As for your point about alternatives, if they add a tax on oxygen you breathe, will you also then say "it's not so bad if the alternative is you are not allowed to breathe at all"?
Backups are already legal in France. It’s pure greed. Why should we pay twice? Also this levy goes to major labels, why should I fund the local Taylor Swift if I want to backup my computer?
> blank media
But we still pay that levy on blank media, phones, tablets, computers, hard drives, and USB keys. They even wanted to put that tax on refurbished items.
> the alternative is that you are not allowed
But it was already legal for the past 50 years. They added this tax, it’s not a gift for us, it’s yet another restriction on what was previously legal.
The alternative is that we download torrents pretty much everywhere except Germany which developed a private industry of lawyers extracting money from leachers and seeders alike.
Germans instead have VPNs set up in Poland or Ukraine and use their streaming websites.
Refs:
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyleft_trolling
Easy money...
It's the same idea as to why reducing the amount of means-testing and other hoops to jump to get social benefits would save taxpayers money - sure, more people who don't need benefits would get them, but that's more than offset by what would be saved by eliminating the workload of (and government jobs dedicated to) gate-keeping those benefits.
Those bands are not famous but despite making sales, they only get a few bucks every year, or it’s the SACEM saying "we forgot to send you the check lol, no biggies." It’s the biggest legal mafia I can think of right now.
Most of the money collected is sent to huge artists (like what Spotify is doing), there is nothing indie about it even if they pretend it’s for the glory of French music.
That's of course not the only alternative. But the recording media levy isn't that bad at least in Finland. The income from those is distributed directly to authors and artists, skipping the labels and publishers altogether.
Huh? It may have dipped at the time Netflix had everything streamable, but there's been a resurgence in the now years since it hasn't.
Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees.
Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable hardware.
These two companies’ kit is expensive, luxury, premium, however you want to refer to it, and so they probably felt comfortable wringing their customers a little more. Probably understandable in the case of Leica owners who will pay £250 for a viewfinder dioptre correction lens (puts hand up again) but less so for hifi owners.
It is not that audiophiles haven’t been shown to spent inordinate sums on the dumbest, snakiest, oiliest tat this side of an Oxford Street souvenir shop, but it has to be material and palpable.
I have yet to find a professional sound engineer, producer, or artist that calls themself an audiophile or uses the insanely overpriced gear marketed to them. Lots of that stuff is demonstrably bullshit and only valuable because it’s expensive.
So the restriction ends up being between things like security cameras, vtc cameras, and traffic cameras vs all other times of cameras. The relatively shitty camera in a doorbell or on your dashboard end up being more expensive to import than the fancy DSLR just because it is used in a different application.
It looks like they have firmware for the G5 X, but not the G5 X 2. :/
Large sensors optimized for still photography overheat when operating continuously for video, so they feature safety limits. Sensor heat dissipation is a big problem and a major differentiating feature of top end cinema cameras.
My (now ancient) Canon 5D mk2 is limited to ~28 minutes of video due to file system limitations.
I believe that under 30 minutes, allows it to be a digicam, but over, requires it to be classified as a video camera.
Most pros generally take scenes as groups of short runs, so that doesn't matter (Canon is used extensively in professional entertainment).
In short, there is no good reason anymore, but originally this was because of EU import tarifs.
It’s a joke.
But yeah technology evolves and the taxes remain. (Though don't complain too much or they will just pick the higher taxes for the newer cameras)
Speaking as an amateur photographer with multiple DSLRs: I’ve certainly needed longer than that for a number of gigs.
So they just publish some activation code on some consumer forum somewhere and from then on it's the consumer's responsibility.
I think they did the same thing with DVD region restrictions.
You can learn about those here: https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/customs-4/calculation-...
We also have VAT (sales tax) which is levied on top of the import duties (so the tax is taxed).
There are even restrictions on the quantities of some products you are allowed to carry between member states, such as alcohol and tobacco, mostly because taxes on those vary by jurisdiction.
It required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for. Which in term required the camera to be connected to a WiFi.
Imagine discovering this while on a trip in the jungle or the desert or whatever ...
It was a one time purchase (I think around 10€) but it was still a complete wtf.
You had to purchase the app through the camera's app store. You read right.
Ofc this failed as my CC was declined because I live in Germany and the transaction got marked as suspicious, coming from SEA.
So I had to go to town and hunt down a wifi USB dongle so I could turn my laptop into a WiFi hotspot for the camera, while using the VPN masking the built-in WiFi to be connected to a German IP.
You had to enter the CC details through the camera's on-screen keyboard that was operated with the joystick on the camera's body. It took me a good ten minutes.
No words.
> It is possible to develop custom Android apps for supported cameras. Keep in mind that they should be compatible with Android 2.3.7.
https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE?tab=readme-ov-file#wha...
I wish Samsung had had better success with their Android native powered cameras (as opposed to the thin shell Sony grafted atop), had decided to stay around. Cellphones have amazing & fantastic photo apps available, where-as the professional systems baked into cameras emphasizes post-production tools for computational photography. Being able to have app devs everywhere making your digital camera better & more usable should be such an obvious priority.
And the earlier Alpha cameras with their Android based shim they could run kind of got this. Sony did announce a new SDK 3 years ago for some of their highest end cameras, but it's a simpler remote-control only SDK. https://alphauniverse.com/stories/sony-announces-new-camera-...
How many people buy apps on their high end camera? Doesn’t sound like it was worth developing an App Store for it.
Sometimes the idea of apps might make sense (this is arguable, but lets not go there) but the old buy it on a real computer (phone allowed) and then load it is correct.
My panasonic G9 just has that stuff built in.
They have a lot of WTF product design decisions.
I have a running joke with friends about how there must be some terrible engineer who is the CEO's son or something that gets to design one feature in every product.
Now that they're established, its time to chip away and add shareholder value.
As William Shakespeare said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the MBAs".
The company went bankrupt and bought by Ricoh, which I sincerely hope will keep the brand alive. Capitalism does really seem to prefer the nickel and dime approach...
Sony's killer feature is (or was at some point) amazingly fast autofocus, which is very useful when photographing animals in the jungle.
Apple had a similar situation once. I was among the thousands of people who paid Apple something like $10 to get a CD-ROM in the mail containing a single CODEC for something video-related.
Sorry for being vague, it was way back in the early days of OS X, so I can't remember exactly what the situation was. But I do know I still have the file in my archive, as I ran across it a few weeks ago.
As long as consumers keep making uneducated choices and companies keep copying one another, that's what we will be getting, and honestly, that's what we deserve.
After all, people watch "reviews" of video gear on YouTube (pretty much all "reviewers" get the gear for free and then pretend they are objective). These "reviewers" use the gear for all of several hours before making the video and forgetting about the gear. But that's what people base their buying decisions on.
And then, "competition" doesn't exist, because companies seem to be hell-bent on copying one another's idiotic ideas. Everybody is afraid to take a bolder step and make something different because, you know, next quarter's profits, and bonuses.
So, nobody cares.
The long term revenue hit you get from pissing off your customers is nearly impossible to measure or attribute.
Occasionally you’ll see a company where the leadership believes in the long term value of not doing this crap. They might do pretty well as a result. (Fans would point to Apple as a huge example, YMMV.) But even with an example to imitate, the incentives are almost impossible to overcome, especially since your revenue story will get worse before it gets better if you change course. And those rare good companies are vulnerable to change in leadership that takes them down the bad path.
As people become accepting of this practice I worry there won't be a long-term hit.
Tech consumers don't understand what kind of services actually warrant a subscription because there's a recurring cost to the provider (renting CPU or storage capacity) versus those that are just rent seeking (ahem-- "recovering development costs").
I was heartened when mainstream media was up-in-arms over auto manufacturers trying to charge monthly fees for features like heated seats or remote start. I worry that consumers can't identify those kinds of gouging behavior with technology and will just accept and normalize these practices.
If every car company charges a subscription for seat heaters, then maybe this will drive a few people who are on the fence to not buy a car at all, but it’s going to be a very small effect. If there’s a competitor that sucks less, the impact will be greater.
If there’s is no such competitor, then this behavior leaves an opening for one. But it’s a total crapshoot as to whether any company will actually seize the opportunity.
Yes, everything sucks now, will Joe Sixpack thus stop buying ...everything?
In such an environment why WOULDN'T I take advantage of the nuisances that I can now safely get away with? I gain control, data, monopolistic single-sourcing, and good old revenue, all by being just a little bit shitty. No more than the next guy.
"Quality" is greatly amorphous before buying a product and the stage is increasingly virtual. The only certain metric can be ye olde "bottom line" (price) and indulging shitty practices allows you to undercut. Consumer gets what they pay for but reckons most other offerings have the same shitty nuisances (and is mostly right) and reckons it's an uphill struggle to ferret out which ones are genuinely good quality and not consumer-second (and is definitely right, people crave the product opinions of genuine humans and these are being increasingly coopted)
So true! So sad!
I generally find the camera manufacturers' in-house programs absolutely terrible. Nikon's webcam utility is free[1], but has significant limitations over the capture card setup. Likewise for Sony. Both have considerable resolution and framerate limits, and I'd rather feed a 4K 60 FPS stream into my meeting program and let it handle the compression than have an XGA 1024×768 15 FPS output from the camera.
[1]: https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/548/Webca...
This is how I've used my Sony camera since COVID. It works great.
I wasn't sure at first if OP was trying to do something nonstandard, because you get video to your computer with a video cable. Plus a way for your computer to capture that, which for me is CamLink.
Honestly, I'm surprised there's a relevant manufacturer app at all. Not surprised that it costs money.
This is a bit like not having power in your home to charge your camera with and asking the manufacturer for a generator. They may have a solution, but the price will be bad.
Edit: 4am math correction...
480Mbit/sec transfer; Uncompressed, that's ~333333 pixels per frame for 60FPS. Not even considering overhead, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class 1.1 support from 2005 includes Motion JPEG (low compression, all patents probably expired given it was developed in the 90s) and MPEG2 (also sufficiently old, to be unencumbered now).
However, if they'd use USB 3.0 ~ 5gbps, ideally over a USB-C port, the connection would be more modern, and easily able to handle even 4K video with now free from patents and well supported compression algorithms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Connector_type_quick_refer...
USB ${N}Gbps instead of the confusing old labels and operation mode classifications.
I'll assume you meant the 5Gbps version of the link, which ( 5000000000/8/3/60 ) can drive about 3.47M (24 bit) pixels at 60fps, even raw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_display_resolut... It looks like 4K mode would require the use of VP8 (likely no hardware included) or h264. Patent license issues are soon to expire, (though some BS one won't until 2030, not sure how that's even possible), but no remedy for older models https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding#Licensin... drat.
Why should the OP need to pay a subscription to enable a feature that is build into the camera, that is a standard feature on other cameras and imposes no ongoing costs to the manufacturer¹? This is an example of gouging, pure and simple.
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[1] unless they are forcing the user to use their hosted service for steaming the webcam output, in which case there is some bandwidth and perhaps other processing cost, but that is on them for having not just implemented a standard that enables local-only recording
Subscriptions make sense when you have ongoing costs like significant load on servers that are needed for the service provided. But not for some piece of software you write once and are more or less done with (minus some small patches)
But requiring a subscription is such a blatant “fuck you, we want more profit without doing any work, and you’re going to provide it.”
Getting video into your computer through USB is _not_ built into the camera. Else why is OP downloading an app to do it?
The app is part of the implementation, and it costs money. I have no problem with the manufacturer charging separately for that. The rest of us can use a video cable to get video into our computers.
> The app is part of the implementation
Give other cameras can do it, there has a standard for it since 2003, and there are F/OSS implementations for others, maybe I'm asking the wrong question and instead should have asked “why should the OP pay a subscription for their bad choice of how to implement the feature?”.
If I asked Sony for a power generator to charge my camera's battery, they could charge me a million a month if they'd like. Hopefully that would signal to me that there are better and more standard options.
They can. But that doesn't mean everyone is forced to be happy about it, and doesn't mean it can't be talked about so other people who might not be happy about it can use the information to chose a different camera from a different manufacturer instead of discovering the issue post-purchase.
> they'd rather use industry-standard HDMI
Or the industry standards for video-over-USB, that this manufacturer chose not to implement because they couldn't easily gouge a subscription out of it.
A standard way of doing that is to use a video cable to get video output and plug that into a capture card on your computer. OP doesn't want to do that and would prefer that the manufacturer included webcam functionality out of the box.
Also fair enough! But if that's the requirement, buy a camera that meets that requirement, and understand that it's not a standard feature in these cameras.
I get subscription fatigue, but this is not a good hill to die on. It's getting outraged over expecting a camera to do what it wasn't designed to do, when there are already simple and standard ways of making it do that.
No, it's because Canon didn't sell OP a webcam. There's no expectation for them to provide webcam software.
If someone wants an external camera that doubles as a webcam with no adapters, that's totally fine for them! They should shop with that in mind.
This is common for cameras. My Sony works in the same way. It can be used as a webcam using HDMI and a capture card. Canon clearly states this in their marketing for OP's camera.
OP apparently didn't understand this, but the solution is simple -- get an HDMI cable and a capture card.
And another standard way, supported by at least some cameras, without even single extra charge never mind a subscription⁰, is apparently video over USB.
> I get subscription fatigue, but this is not a good hill to die on.
No users are dying on this hill¹. OP is just stating, in an exasperated tone admittedly, what the state of affairs is with this camera. Some of us are agreeing with him that it seems off, and is part of the ongoing enshitification of the software and hardware worlds. Others can use this information to help guide their choice of camera (or supplier of other equipment), or not, their choice.
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[0] Which implies they could decide to discontinue the feature at a whim later, no matter how much the user has paid between now and then.
[1] I'll refrain² from mentioning that you are putting up quite a determined fight for the “nah, this sort of thing is fine, really” hill.
[2] Oops, I tell a lie…
> Use the EOS Utility Webcam Beta Software (Mac and Windows) to turn your Canon camera into a high-quality webcam, or do the same using a clean HDMI output.
Canon advertising its potential to be used as a webcam doesn't mean it's a webcam. It means you can adapt it for use as one. And you still can. The adapter is an HDMI cable or software, which may or may not be free.
Why does he even even record the videos himself? He can just hire actors to do what he wants, probably a lot better.
And what's the whole thing with buying a camera? He should just buy a studio and hire a crew to manage all that stuff.
The outrage in this thread is incredible. Buying a couple A/V adapters to adapt a non-webcam camera into a webcam is somehow seen as a terrible burden.
If someone doesn't want to do that, perhaps they should buy...a webcam. No adapters needed.
A camera comes with more power at the cost of simplicity for this use case.
A capture card and HDMI cable together cost less than $100. Hiring someone will be at least an order of magnitude more expensive—and more so the more people you hire.
That was the entire point of the comment, to point out the slippery slope in the HDMI/cable card argument in the first place.
There is an absolutely massive gulf between a one-time supplementary purchase of $100 versus a multi-million dollar studio, film crew, actors. The comment was ludicrous, sorry.
For example, my camera can't operate and charge over USB at the same time, so you need a supplemental power supply. And it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video. And videos can only be so long.
So I've got a HDMI-to-USB converter, a special HDMI cable, a special power brick and adaptor, a special tripod so all those cables don't pull the whole setup over, and I've got to restart video recording every 30 minutes or so, and wipe the microsd card regularly.
Your camera's probably better suited to this than mine :)
Even if you aren't buying Elgato, you can use Elgato's compatibility page to know which cameras work well: https://www.elgato.com/us/en/s/cam-link-camera-check
I returned it and got an Elgato, which has worked great from day one.
For those who don't know, the dummy battery is a power cable with a battery-shaped adapter that plugs in where the battery would go to provide continuous power.
I believe you, but thats very silly.
Most mirrorless cameras a hybrids and you usually do not need this feature while takting stills.
I also just tried connecting it as a webcam over USB, and it does continuous autofocus when set up like that too. I'm sure it uses more power, but the camera can power itself over the USB port while connected, so thats not a problem.
My Sony that I've been using as a webcam since COVID can do that, and it was 6 years old when I bought it. Upgrade when you can!
> it won't autofocus continuously or keep the exposure and white balance stable unless you're recording a video
That basically defeats our setup as now they're worrying about their recording time running out in the middle of a meeting.
It's just a really poor reason to be outraged at Canon (or Sony or any of the other companies whose non-webcam cameras don't seamlessly turn into webcams without some standard A/V adapters).
Many of us have had the experience of clients telling us to "just" write code that they think is easy, but we know how that can go in reality.
There's already a simple solution here in HDMI. I don't see a reason to be outraged at Canon over not providing another solution that most buyers will never even use.
USB camera feeds work out of the box with Sony mirrorless cameras.
So ultimately, if Canon wants to play these games, let's see if the market of NEW buyers like me respond in a way that will make Canon change their minds.
Are there any USB-connectable capture devices that can process 4K?
Everything I see tries really hard to hide the fact that while they can input 4K, they can only produce 1920x1080.
USB can do just about anything. Video out is one possibility. But HDMI can already do that.
It doesn't make sense to expect the manufacturer to provide a free app to make USB do something you can already do over HDMI, and for which HDMI is intended.
This article is rage bait where there's no real cause for outrage. But it's adjacent enough to "right to repair" and "subscription fatigue" that it sounds outrageous.
The video feed should (depending on usecase, sure) be compressed on the device and sent over USB.
Sending uncompressed video just to be badly compressed in a capture device is most definitely not the right tool for the job.
Your HDMI capture device (which is a cheap portable device with limited processing power) is probably going to do a much worse job.
Sending uncompressed video over usb is absurd.
These cameras are not made to be webcams. OP is using theirs as one, and that's fine; I do too. But device-side compression for USB video out, a webcam app, etc. are webcam features. They come at a cost, and many camera buyers don't need them.
For those of us using these cameras in these nonstandard ways, we can reach for HDMI, which is the right tool for this particular job.
The standalone cameras I've used haven't included free webcam functionality and I don't think that's outrageous, but apparently many people here who've been downvoting me disagree.
Personally, I think HDMI is great for A/V tasks that a camera doesn't support out of the box since it's a widely supported standard.
No, they are not. The USB port is (usually) USB 2.0 and the video output, even though the application might claim 1080p 30 FPS, is a 'digital upscale'[1] from XGA or 720p. That in my view is decidedly not 'high quality'. My monitor has eight times that resolution and more than four times the framerate, totalling more than a 32× increase in bandwidth, and it is from 2021.
If users want high-quality video out from their pro cameras, use a capture card or monitor. That's how it's always been. As another commenter said, this article is rage-bait because the OP has purposely chosen a decidedly poorly-supported way to use their camera's functionality instead of the industry standard.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/canon/comments/1e32r51/canon_eos_we...
The Canon G5 X II has USB 3.1 over a USB-C port. All of what you said does not in any way shape or form apply to the topic at hand.
This entire comment section is a massive storm in a teacup by photography and AV amateurs who don't know the ins and outs of AV work flows and assume that stuff should just work the way they want it to.
$100 of one time purchase software is approximately $5-10 per year of recurring revenue. And so if they can convince you that $5 a month is "not bad" then you're effectively outlaying $1000 for the software. In return you do get massive flexibility like, say, using the software for 1 month and then never again.
Some of it is due to inflation, we'd choke if we saw the real capital cost.
a quick google suggests that maybe Black Ops Cold War (2020): Over $700 million in development costs, 30 million copies sold. Thats $23 just in dev, not marketing and distribution, operation of the servers etc. Whereas black ops 3 was about $10 a copy, but sold for $60. Most of us would balk at paying ~$140 for a game, but that's roughly the inflationary pressures.
Anyways long story, I dont like subscriptions either, but I also dont want to lay down $100s on a piece of software I might not use in a month's time, especially if there wasnt a free trial for me to confirm it's not total crap.
Find arbitrary reasons to justify squeezing customers on a regular basis. Customers are treated as assets. Often, but not exclusively, via software based subscriptions.
Just envy at the big players and hope for that sweet recurring revenue.
Software showed the world the incredible value of everyone being a renter instead of an owner.
Ironically HN (as an ad for Ycombinator) exists largely to enforce that new paradigm
One solution is to make a law that says it's illegal, and then enforce that law, ideally with harsh penalties so executives and companies can't get away with it.
I hope this helps!
There is a standard:
https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/content/latest-from-mpb/2024-chall...
Sony encourages their use for vlogging/youtube because that's a huge market and let's you plug in HDMI to your computer without using special software
On the one hand, perhaps this fixed software should be a one-time purchase and not a subscription. However, if this software was provided for free, what incentive would the management at Cannon have for investing into updating the software for MacOS when it inevitably breaks? I think there is a small subset of users using this camera as a webcam, and frankly I'm surprised Cannon even has an official app.
They did make the "Imaging Edge Webcam" program, I think some time during the pandemic, but AFAIK it's just a PTP preview to webcam driver, so the quality is pretty terrible and you can do that with OBS+gphoto2.
My older Sony cameras (A6300 is my newest "old" Sony camera) don't have the feature (unless you use that terrible software you mentioned) Im surprised to read that even the reasonably modern A7SIII doesn't support it. It must be one of the last models without USB streaming support.
For older cameras, probably the easiest way to do it (if you don't want to install anything) is to pick up a ~$20 usb HDMI capture card from amazon. Connect the HDMI output on the camera to the capture card. And then set your camera up to output a "clean" video source via the HDMI port.
As I understand it, modern capture cards work without drivers on every OS, just like the modern sony cameras do.
I guess they figured out a better way to do the accounting, since they never did that particular stunt again.
For your "streamer" stuff, I'd expect them to use something appropiate to the job - something connecting direct to a network outputting NDI, or something with SDI output.
They mostly don't, though. The standard "high-end" streaming setup is whatever second-hand mirrorless camera has a clear HDMI output, and an HDMI capture card.
Disabling a physical component on a device a person owns and has owned for a while shouldn't be permitted.
I'm able to pipe gphoto2 frames to a pipewire sink or v4l2 device and it works great for making my Canon EOS 250D into a webcam.
It doesn't overheat even after hours of use (unlike most full-frame sensors), and I've got it capturing in monochrome because I just really like B&W.
And because its face/eye detect autofocus is reasonably capable -- I can keep a wide aperture/shallow depth of field, which in turn, results in beautiful bokeh... So no Teams filters to blur my background -- I'm using optics instead.
One person I am in calls with regularly recently got a professional A/V setup for video calls and it is such a treat to get in a call with them.
So I think people would notice and appreciate a good setup?
Part of the burden of this is on us.
If a digital camera OS is a small embedded system running on a microcontroller it has a fixed cost, and lasts forever, just like the electrical components.
If it’s an instance of chromium running on Ubuntu server or Android, with hundreds of dependencies in your program alone than the cost to stop it from bricking is effectively infinite. (I’m even aware of medical surgery devices using Electron these days)
Those early chromium devs had no idea the whole world would depend on them!
I've bought it in Japan so the model is labeled Kiss X4. Apparently they give it a different name for the product depending on the market: EOS 550D = Rebel T2i = EOS Kiss X4
Software works but you need to pay a recurring subscription (aargh I hate this model) to unlock features your hardware already supports.
I later moved back to a Mac as my daily driver and the Canon software was never reliable on m1 chips. The camera didn't have clean HDMI out. I was pretty frustrated because my fancy webcam no longer worked. Canon showed little desire to support Macs.
I purchased a used Sony that had clean HDMI and it worked great with a cheap HDMI capture device.
I now use an Insta360 webcam with a large sensor. Image quality and focus speed are great. It has slightly less bokeh effect than the Canon and Sony, but folks always comment about how good my video looks.
They are also quite a bit cheaper than going the DSLR route for webcam.
That probably makes it pretty easy to reverse engineer their software to bypass the restrictions.
I suppose I'm glad some people find time to do this.
Canon is a company that is in the business of making profit (not just software or just hardware).
If they realize that they can charge you $1 for every time you chew gum while taking photos, and people will actually pay for that privilege $1-per-chewing-gum-session (disclaimer: chewing gum not provided) they would charge you!
Remember BMW and heating in the UK (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62142208)??
Getting paid $6k for a camera once is good. Getting paid another $50 a year for doing nothing is even better.
I assume the great brain who came with the idea is: "we got 10 million cameras out there, if 0.5% of those camera owners pay $50 pa, then that's 10m x 0.5% x $50 = $2.5m pa. If I could get a 100k bonus for bringing $2.5m gross to my company I would also suggest this idea.
There are 3rd party utilities (paid), but I had trouble with autofocus when I tried them.
I wish camera manufacturers put half as much effort into usability as smartphone companies. Why does a camera need drivers to be recognized as a webcam at all? Why doesn't my 2000€ camera come with GPS and LTE built in? Why is the software still as crappy as in the 90ies?
2 seconds later on HN: why does my 2000€ camera spies on me? If you want a smartphone, use one, leave us be with our sane tools.
If the camera had GPS built-in, you could have geo-tagged photos without needing spyware on your phone.
Geotagged photos are extremely useful, there's a reason why they sell GPS dongles for cameras. Cameras really should have that built-in (and I think the top-of-the-line models do)
(but I would go with the Sony because I like their designs the most, Nikon would be my 2nd choice)
Nikon users are missing out on a 16-35 2.8 though, but I'm sure Nikon is working on it.
macOS Ventura version 13 macOS Monterey version 12 macOS Big Sur version 11
The indie / startup space has been so all in on subscription revenue that I guess it's not a huge surprise that the big companies eventually tried to get in on the act.
Good thing there's Sony and Nikon.
Historically video related field was one of the most patent and license encumbered. That's why AV1 exists.
Nikon seems to be the "good guy" these days.
The problem is we commercially enable hardware companies to be shitty software companies by buying hardware that lacks basic open protocols. We accept single platform lenses that could work in any similar mount. Photographers invite this mistreatment.
It would be trivial for Canon to stream the live view out as UVC over USB and it would have Just Worked™ as a webcam on every platform.
This isn't just a Canon problem. It took Nikon several generations of dSLR to add standard USB ports. This could be Japanese hubris or a lack of competition or a lack of engineers actually talking to their customers.
If Canon started trying to sell cameras that literally only work with their software (not the case today) then maybe you’d have a semi-valid beef, although such a camera would also sell very poorly in the market given the many alternatives that exist, including Canon’s own previous lineup. Even then it wouldn’t be illegal, just harder to justify from a business perspective. Perhaps they could give away a DSLR for a yearly subscription and the math would pencil out for some people. That would be mildly interesting. Canon would have to do a lot of work to close such a product, though, as all of their existing hardware is extremely open.
Do you have to use the software from Cannon? What about any other webcam software that runs on Mac?
Does Cannon's software support non-Cannon webcams? IE, is it standalone software that the author prefers to use over other webcam software?
Is this a case where most customers will never use the webcam software, thus Cannon is "passing the savings on to them" by charging separately for the software?
There's half a camera's worth of features in these things that people won't use, but they still pay for them.
Software on the actual camera is yet another question for me, why don't we have cameras with full fledged modern OS-es running custom androids for example with installable apps so you can finish a lot of stuff on the camera itself or make sharing to wherever a breeze.
because then you end up something that is mediocre at a bunch of random stuff rather than great at something specific.
a multitool is rarely as good at hammering as an actual hammer. a multitool is almost never as good at screwing as an actual screwdriver.
So it's at most a prosumer feature for which the wifi they have is fine.
For professional use we want SDI which can transmit uncompressed video at whatever frame rate the camera supports, and we pay for that... Maybe HDMI but that has it's own headaches...
And the moment you want Android with apps on it you run into all the problems that comes with Android with apps on it...
You are then also responsible for keeping said app up to date. If you think android solves that problem you purely need to look at the custom modding community for how annoying firmware support is, and these cameras won't have generic phone camera chips, they have custom processors which would then require custom firmware.
But my usual argument, if it's so easy go and do it. Many successful projects/companies has started exactly like that, why don't we have X? Go build it.
Well, that would prevent them from selling overpriced grips with integrated better wifis which is 999 usd from Cannon...
A little more than 10 years ago Samsung tried that with their Galaxy NX (a bona fide DSLR running Android). It flopped and most reviewer noted that it a generally sluggish camera; a deal breaker when one of the design constraint of all their other competitor is to be reactive.
We mustn't forget that the main purpose of a camera is to take pictures, not to connect to a network.
Like for the Olympics there's mention of using a gizmo (PDT-FP1) whose sole role is to connect to the camera and transmit the picture wirelessly (even though the A9 have some wifi connectivity). And of course this wireless transmitter is quite expensive.
In cinema they have the same approach, as you don't buy "a camera", but you rent a sensor, a lens, a monitor, a focus pull, a storage disk, etc.
Here's a guide for those interested (not by me): https://www.crackedthecode.co/how-to-use-your-dslr-as-a-webc...
I am confused, I assume the 900 dollars is the cost of his camera but where did the 6300 figure come from?
What webcams, if any, have higher quality optics?
Do other SLRs do the same thing as Canon and charge a subscription?
You can get quite good webcams for $100–300 (from Insta360, Obsbot, Logitech maybe …) which work out of the box with USB-C and have mostly okayish software that supports changing things like brightness, white balance, etc. These however still have small sensors and cannot achieve a good shallow depth-of-field (bokeh). Running them at higher sensitivity (ISO), e.g. in darker environments, inevitably causes noise. But if you just want to participate in meetings, it does not matter. I had a Logitech StreamCam and upgraded to an Insta360 Link 2C, which is definitely much better but still not on-par with a proper camera. You should at least get a good keylight or ring light.
The next step up would be mirrorless cameras with built-in or interchangeable lenses made for vlogging, which also can be used like a webcam. They have much bigger sensors and better image quality at a pricing point of $400-1000, e.g. Sony ZV-E10 II, Fuji X-M5, Canon EOS M50 Mark II, … most of them claim webcam support with the provided software. Fuji's software is bad though, so I wouldn't recommend it on a Mac. I can't talk about the other ones. The benefit is that they also have a flip screen that you can use for better framing. They all support webcam modes.
If you have a camera that has an HDMI output and that outputs a clean HDMI signal (without any overlays), you can also buy an HDMI USB capture device and feed that into OBS, which allows you to set up a virtual webcam. There are cheap no-name USB capture cards that produce mediocre images, and more top-of-the line ones like the Elgato Cam Link. This should be the most device-independent variant where you're also not dependent on any vendor's proprietary software.
Typically, that can be reduced to one simple question: Can it run custom firmware or custom operating system?
If it cannot, you have to make do with whatever restrictions the manufacturer has imposed in their software. Be it a subscription for webcam mode. Or even completely disabling your device if they so decide.
If it can run custom firmware or operating system, there is a fair chance that the community creates software for this device that is actually good. One that allows you to do what you want with it.
I have heard about some "firmware enhancements" like Magic Lantern or CHDK for Canon which, if I understand correctly, are some kind of extensions that could be loaded by the camera's main firmware on startup and then provide additional functionality.
It is not a custom firmware. But it offers similar functionality.
In relation to the rent-seeking behavior of Canon they allegedly nudged a certain open-source camera firmware project not to support some of their most high-end cameras. But with Canon losing interest in DSLRs I hope the situation changes.
Given how long digital cameras have been around (more because that says it can be done with a codebase that fits in context rather than anything about memorisation), I wonder how good LLMs are at coding this specific thing.
(I don't have a camera to try it with, or I'd give it a go myself).
I don't have problem with these practices at all as long as they don't try to prevent it you from running your hardware through alternative means. If the camera police isn't trying to get you for writing your own software to avoid paying Canon 5$ a month, its all good.
Companies that focus on what they want, rather than what the customer wants, will cease to exist (or change hands).
Meanwhile, the 30 bucks camera I bought works out of the box. I didn't even need to install any software. Decent quality, no frills.
I haven't pulled the trigger on it, can anyone who owns it confirm or deny this?
In the fifth paragraph:
“Admittedly, it did not cost me the $6300 from the article's title, much closer to $900. Nonetheless, everything I'm describing translates to every other Canon camera model!”
Edit: The camera he uses is a 2019 pocket camera. The 6299 must be another model that has the same restrictions.
Everything coming out of China is way more customer friendly, usually way cheaper and getting better and better to a point that they are surpassing everything else that exists. If DJI releases a full-frame mirrorless camera with L-mount (which they are going to), Canon, Nikon, Fuji and all these companies with firmware from the 90s will die and I am not going to miss them.
They have made absolutely no effort to provide any value and a whole lot of tacit collusion is going on. They still sell you SD cards instead of including an SSD which would be MUCH cheaper and faster. Same with battery technology. Compatibility, apps, software... everything.
You can choose your suppliers by other measures than merely price. Arguably, you should if the market you are particupating in is not free and fair in this way.
Personally, as a happy owner of a Japanese-made under-$2k camera that works perfectly well for all purposes and even has official CAD files published for accessory 3D printing enthusiasts, I see no reason to switch to a Chinese brand (well, also there is no product that beats it on both specs and price, but even if there was I would think twice). People tend to over-generalize, but reality is not as simple as “all manufacturers from %country1% are better because X and all manufacturers from %country2% suffer from issue Y”.
[0] https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.amp.asp?newsIdx=113...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/south-korea-indic...
[2] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-07-19/busines...
For consumer products from recent years, like smartphones or computers, the vast majority of innovative products are Chinese, even if the quality or documentation is frequently subpar.
Now I see very frequently cases when US companies or Japanese companies should better start to copy the Chinese if they want to stay competitive, but instead of doing that, they push for the same kind of tariff protections for which the US heavily criticized any other country in the past and blackmailed them in various ways to force them to remove the tariff protections against US companies.
But I got a DJI Ronin (handheld gimbal) the other day. Its a gamechanger. With the camera mounted on the gimbal, I can do handheld shots that you could easily use in a blockbuster movie.
The only downside is that the whole thing (camera + gimbal) is a very awkward package. The weight is in the wrong place. And that means the gimbal needs to be bigger and bulkier to compensate - which in turn makes it even more awkward to use. You could make a much better product by integrating the gimbal and camera. Put just the lens and sensor on the gimbal, but move the screen, battery and CPU to the "outside" package. Then you could shrink the gimbal itself and remove all the mounting hardware and manual weight adjustment sliders.
Apparently DJI has started making $10k cinema cameras along exactly these lines. I really hope the Japanese camera brands take notice. From a product standpoint, its a big deal - and I'm sure it won't be long before DJI makes much cheaper video cameras that start seriously eating Sony & Canon's market share.
Everyone is a thief.
https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...
Which camera is that?
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/25/tsmc_samsung_espionag...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/samsung-hit-with-303-mln-jury-...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1314374/south-korea-sams...
That was Japan's game to lose and their loss was absolutely deserved. Japanese companies are more interested in bickering with each other, while Korean and Chinese companies have bigger worldly goals.
Japan Display[1] and Renesas[2] could have been the LG/Samsung had Japan realized much sooner that there are better things to be doing than dragging each other down.
Japanese companies spent time and money investing in new technologies and then proceeded to waste them because they were far more interested in keeping trade secrets to themselves and dragging each other down, rather than coming together and acting as one national industry like Korean and Chinese companies. The Japanese companies did come together eventually (Japan Display, et al.), but way too late.
I don't think the power draw of an SSD plays well with the current battery tech.
Plus most user value the fact that you can rapidly swap those thing. The last thing you want to do during a wedding is having to wait for the data to transfer and/or the battery to recharge.
If these opened up, at least to the level iPhone did in 2007, they'd have an ecosystem as people still used them. As-is, for most purposes, my Android phone is a better camera than my full frame interchangeable lens camera.
First, my sony camera (and all sony cameras released in the last ~3+ years) support USB video streaming out of the box, with no drivers. I suspect other brands are the same. It looks like canon is just stuck in the dark ages on this one. They also support remote camera control over USB, and all sorts of other things. Mostly - but not entirely - in an open ecosystem. I have several devices which can control the camera over the USB connection - so it can't be that hard.
Second, are you sure your android phone takes better photos? What camera & lens do you have on your digital camera? Have you upgraded from the kit lens it came with?
I got a sony a7iv last year. If I take the same photo with my a7 and my iphone, the photos are wildly different. The iphone's photos are lovely, but they have this very slightly AI generated gloss about them. Everything is slightly too clean somehow. Its like I'm looking at reality plus. In comparison, The photos from my sony camera feel like real photos. Dark things are dark. Light things are light. If I crank the ISO at night, the photos are noisy. If I blow out the aperature, the depth of field hits you like a truck made of clouds. The photos look like what I pointed my camera at.
In short, I massively prefer the photos I get from my dedicated camera. I suspect if I showed you, you'd prefer them too.
My research shows Sony is the outlier here. Fuji, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic all require software or drivers to be used as a USB camera (or at least did as of a year ago or so).
Also, the camera control software these companies put out, for a computer or a phone, is almost always awful.
Buggy, slow, unreliable.. It's a real problem.
That’s definitely true of Sony too. Just - thankfully - you don’t need to install any of it to do most stuff. (With the one exception of sony’s gyro based image stablisation).
There’s also several apps in the App Store which let you remotely control Sony cameras. I assume people have reverse engineered the protocol Sony’s offical app uses.
I'm probably a terrible photographer and I shoot with a "budget" kit (Canon R10, RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM, RF 35mm F1.8 IS STM), but looking at the 10 last photos I've taken and liked (so going back a year basically), I don't think I'd be able to retake a single one of them on my iPhone and get something comparable.
The smartphone ate the market segment that was previously occupied by point and shoot cameras, not pro / enthusiast camera. I don't think dedicated / non-smart cameras as we have today will die. You will still need dedicated camera for wedding, sports, wildlife, etc. For these you don't need a software ecosystem, you need a robust hardware.
I agree that for sharing to my family a photo of my dog looking cute my phone is a better camera. However for the use case I mentioned, I don't see how I can decently edit a 50 Mpx image on a screen that's not even a quarter of the size of my laptop.
Not to say that better software/feature is not needed though; I would love to be able to do an efficient initial culling/sorting of a given shoot in-camera.
But as phone cameras are reaching limits due to the physical amount of light that they can capture, “computational photography” ML models are essentially making up details that aren’t there.
So your Android photos may have the look you want, but be worse for many purposes.
Any Android/iOS flagship phone right now is MILES behind current full-frame mirrorless technology, and I doubt they will ever be truly comparable. There are too many technical limitations.
I am pretty sure we will eventually have consumer cameras with an Android-like OS and the equivalent of today's full-frame sensors, delivering awesome footage, but mobile devices will never come close to a (semi-)professional camera.
$5 on a $6299 camera is nothing, just pay for it, petty but not really infuriating. Even at $500 I would simply pay should I need it. If I had reasons to buy a $6299 camera, it probably means a budget in the tens of thousands, for lenses, lighting, accessories, etc... $500 is peanuts by comparison.
But I certainly wouldn't want my very expensive setup to fail just because some server is down.
As in, so you can plug the camera into an iPhone and transfer photos from camera to phone?
A one time payment would have been inconvenient, I assumed that based on the title; but that’s even worse.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/7/23863258/bmw-cancel-heated...
Many of those "features" were walked back on backlash, just to then be bundled "free" for the initial buyer only...
Like Tesla... buy FSD? It doesn't transfer with you OR the vehicle, just ... vanishes.
They have CCAPI which is the camera control api, I believe it is rest based.
Imagine if we live to the day where fresh air becomes a monthly subscription—with tiered plans, of course! Basic air might be free but stale, while premium plans offer "mountain-fresh" or "ocean-breeze" options. And heaven forbid you forget to renew your subscription or your credit card expires—suddenly, breathing might not be in your favor!
_____________
1. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2251993/the-nightmare-is-rea...
2. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...
I have a few fuji cameras, and sadly their webcam software doesn't work for me, but for a cheap fix I bought a low-cost (~$10) HDMI USB capture card on AliExpress, and it works wonders.
Software development isn't free, but everyone needs to hammer the message home to everyone they know that the marginal cost of software is ZERO. Any company continuing to charge for software is probably rolling that money back into enshittification which nobody wants anyway.
This Canon software would actually make their product more valuable like the software inside the camera that they don't charge subscription for. Perhaps a one time price for an app, but this whole subscription and advertising trend is one I have not and will not join.
By the way, your images go to a weird url for me, maybe it is because it is Brave browser.
For example
https://romanzipp.com/blog/[%7B%22id%22:%22assets::blog//no-...
Am sick of basic features being pay-walled, or subscription-only - or abandoned/bricked when the company decides to "end-of-life" them after a couple years.
While it ain't pretty - or small - at least it doesn't require a subscription... "CinePi"... (https://github.com/schoolpost/CinePI)
TBH, this is true of pretty much any form of consumer hardware. But this isn't a technical problem, it's a social one. So we can't solve it with tech; we need legislation around this kind of BS.
I’m willing to offer so much loyalty to companies who aren’t in the business of fucking over their customers.
Fuck Canon, fuck shady ass business practices.
It's like people love the horrible experience lol rather trauma than education type shit Leibniz was so beyond wrong about this smh
I don't understand why this is necessary in the first place anyway. These cameras all have USB interfaces to expose the card content or even remote control, it wouldn't have cost them much engineering effort to add an UVC descriptor...
That's the Canon G5 X II Enshittified.
To be successful you need to keep your buyer unaware of the trap until they have too much invested within your walls to cut their losses emotionally. Here the poster has bought a high cost camera (even at a discount) without realising there would be an on-going recurring cost.
Expensive propriety hardware, tied to propriety software, tied to an online account with telemetry, where nothing works without all the other bits is a wonderful trap. It works great for John Deer and I guess will soon be coming with your next vehicle.
Personally, someone bought me a Fitbit Sense 2 watch for Christmas. It can't even be used as a watch until you have signed in with a Google account and "consent to Google using my health and wellness data". Of course you don't get to see this before you break the seal on the box. And although the watch gathers lots of your data, you can't see it until after it has been upload to Google, and some of it is only available once you have signed up for Fitbit Premium.
But wait, it gets better. The time on the default watch face is tiny (for an old fart like me). I could download a larger one, if I signed up for Fitbit Premium. I could sign up to download the developer kit and write my own for free (a new watch face is a simple example). However, if I go too far and accidentally break the data collection, they reserve the right to suspend my accounts and turn my £200 "watch" into a brick.
I am still deciding if I can return my sanity using a hammer.
If I buy a camera again (probably won't), #1 selection criteria will be connectivity.
You can use your Canon camera as a webcam without having to pay for it. It even says so in the last image in the article! You plug it in via USB and you get a webcam. It's just that you can't use any feature other than reading the video feed. But you can get other software for that.
I guess "You can't use Canon's webcam software to adjust your video feed, or remote control the camera, or get 60fps video; that will be $5/month" would make a less catchy headline.
https://codeberg.org/traverseda/nixos-config/src/commit/ee3f...
To get this out of nixos you need to create 4 files
dslrWebcamConfContent goes into your modprobe config
dslrUdevRule goes into your udev rules
dslrWebcamScript goes somewhere, probably /opt
dslrWebcamService is a systemd service.
Quote from [1]: "At $149, this may be the most cost-effective camera accessory ever."
All other features (including selection of on which eye - left or right - AI human tracking autofocus should focus on) are free :)
Another option would be to use blockchain and wifi so that customers (affiliates) could earn extra cash on vacation by pairing their camera with other tourists that see the feature and like it.
That same blockchain technology could also enable off network usage based billing of say 25 cents each time a picture is taken. Pixel noise water mark cryptographic hashes to track compliance, of course.
Now you understand why people fight for open source software and use Linux. Join us or keep dealing with the walled garden scams.
Why not blame Apple for not providing drivers? It is pretty normal in Linux to check hardware compatibility. You mainly buy hardware with good software support.
Apple does not support this camera, so do not buy it!
