Elgato Facecam Mk.2 Comparison - Is Elgato still the best webcam?

back in 2021 Elgato changed his streaming game and dropped one of the best webcams in the market the Elgato face cam when the face cam was first announced so many creators praised just how good it was and for the past two and a half years honestly many competitors have tried to take down the king but they couldn't including the likes of Logitech Razer and many more what the face cam first brought to the game was honestly outstanding it was a 24mm equivalent lens with a Sony sensor that shot uncompressed 10860 now back in 2021 that was gamechanging because many creators were questioning if they even needed their DSLR mirrorless camera given just how good it was now in fact Elgato provided software that gave users more manual adjustments similar to a real camera and that was something that no competitor did back in 2021 if you look at things like Logitech and you had to go deep into window settings just to get that but now it's 2024 and things have changed and the question is is the face cam still King because the gap between competition has definitely shrunk down this is the Elgato face cam Mark I and honestly the king is back starting at $149.99 the agato face cam Mark I Came Out Swinging not only with a great price but there was just a small enough feature set of upgrades that make the hugest of results the mark I's packed with a lot of small changes but those small changes make great strides so let's take a look welcome to the MK2 like Tony Stark learning from his designs and improving with each suit built elato looked at what was working and what needed Improvement for the next go around so let's talk about what stayed the same and what changed cue the cool little table over here actually should be better over here so what's stay the same well both the face cam and the Mark I still shoot at 1080 60 frames per second they still maintain a fixed Focus system which is about 11.8 in to about 47 in they still also have an aperture of 2.4 to allow a lot of light in and they still use the Sony Coss starvis sensor now both are still USB 3.0 with a type-c in the back and they come with type A on the front to connect to your computer and they both have onboard storage for your settings they still shoot in compressed and uncompressed formats preferably the uncompressed format is the best but that's the similar right let's talk about what's changed you go from a face cam having an 82 degree viewing angle to an 84 degre so get a little bit of wider shot another big key difference is the Mark I is actually backwards compatible via USB 2.0 and what they carried over from the face cam Pro they actually built it in with the face face cam MK2 which is going to be that pan and tilt Zoom where you could have a digital zoom and have it be able to cross range or even follow Focus depending on your setup another thing that's majorly different is the HDR capabilities and what I like to call the color science or what they say is the color image algorithm with MK2 now the differences on paper seem small but let's actually explore the two side by side so you can compare and for this test I wanted to be as equivalent as possible right so I shot 1080p 60 frames same ISO same aperture same white balance and same shutter speed in low light settings the MK2 just does a phenomenal job capturing more light for your subject where the face cam original just doesn't and when you're looking at a very underexposed situation with the face cam it's not as underexposed with the Mark I now in high light settings the face cam really does have a hard time dealing with highlights and you can see where overexposure occurs whereas in the same spots through the MK Mark I it is able to compensate and reduce the Highlight so you don't get that same overexposure and just gives you more well a well-rounded image for your subject now other things that I noticed is that the contrast of Shadows and blocks differ dramatically between the two even though both cameras are still the same contrast settings and saturation settings I feel like the face cam the original is just a little bit harsher on your saturations and your shadows in contrast whereas the mark 2 kind of gives you more of a flat image feel and I think that people who are accustomed to light and color profiles in OBS like are playing with Luts are really going to shine with the Mark I some of the things that I noticed that the Mark I doesn't do just quite as well is with background noise now I'm a photographer by trade so for me I really do pixel Peep and look at stuff like that and if you don't know what noise is it's artifacting is just think of when you're looking at like a a movie reel or something like that you see like rain almost like that channel 3 back when you're playing like a Super Nintendo you see that kind of fuzz in the background and especially that harsh lighting or dark in light areas and partially it's because it's a smaller sensor where typically on like a mirrorless camera like a apsc or a CR sensor camera versus a full-frame camera you would wouldn't see it as much at a lower ISO you still see it heavily because of the smaller sensors in these cameras so enough of me jabbering let's actually look at some Fuller images of let's actually do a full test so I'm going to take a little bit more behind the scenes of my setup so you can see just what I do to test it and how I tested these cameras start recording okay I have every one of my devices I have my Mac Studio with the cam link recording at indistinguishable I have my MacBook Pro with the MK2 recording indistinguishable and I got my Windows laptop back there recording on the original face cam U indistinguishable indistinguishable setting whatever and I have them also they're going uncompressed the Elgato the face cam first one I think works better with Windows than the face cam Mark II U so I got those two going and we're going to show you in my typical like recording SL streaming how it looks so let's fix the lights so we're going to get my lights down the blue so this is typically how I get this set up so you can see this is my z30 just with the natural light how it captures my scene so I got my key lights going you can see how the different cameras are setting up now I'm going to pull my main light off okay I got my main dome light again the Aman 60x I got that going at about 35% shut this door a little bit now you can see here where like my blue overheads are not as strong so what I'm going to do is grab my phone and I'm going to turn on an accent light so hold on there perfect so now there's a little bit more of an accent light there I could play with round with lit but let me see if I could do this without messing up okay so here's my monstrosity of a setup to test each of these cameras let's see how they go so settings are across the board so I have my Nikon Z6 over here right and I have a 24 mm lens that has a viewing angle of about 80° which is going to be similar to what these are since these are both 24 mm equivalents with about 82 82 to an 8 4 in or 84° viewing angle so that way I have them about approximately real quick here the same distance from each other so you can see where the centers are to get a more accurate representation of how it looks other things to note is that they're all shooting at 160th of a second for shutter speed ISO is at one about 150 or as close as it can get to 150 and aperture is the same so 2.4 2.4 and then that's like a 2.5 just because that's the closest it could get so I have the ultimate comparison of the original OG which started at like $200 which now retails for 130 the Mark I which starts at 150 and a $2,000 plus body and lens kit let's go one of the biggest things that I notied from the first version to the second version is a fact that the amount of colors and oversaturation versus like over contrast and even some of the exposures are not just the same to me to me the mark 2 looks just as good and very equivalent to my mirrorless setup like again this is a $2,000 kit that I'm using um and Apples to Apples almost even though it's like apples it really is apples to oranges like don't mind this little space right here this is actually the prompter you're seeing because of the viewing angle but like even looking at it the biggest differences between the Mark I and the Nikon Z6 is the fact that probably getting more noise in the Mark I where like if you look at my shadows and the background you see a lot more speckle and stuff like that that's like almost like it's almost like if you remember gaming with channel 3 and you had that r fuzz you get some of that in the background whereas with the Nikon Z6 and even my z30 you don't get that and partially it's because of the size of the sensor this is a fullframe sensor you're looking at right here whereas this is like tiny in comparison to it like let me see if I put a graphic here showing you the difference of the image sizes of a seos sensor versus a fullframe sensor overall comparing the images like honestly like I'm actually impressed I'm impressed with the difference from the original version to the Mark I like it is night and day where I think that I may not even have to use like a Z6 or even my z30 for any more setups like I used to rock maybe the z30 in this face cam but like this almost perfectly matches together and now if I really want to go like all out I could bust out my Z6 my z30 and the Mark I as like my one 123 cameras but honestly between the Mark I and the Z6 they are identical almost obviously there's going to be some things I have to do as far as like color change like not color change but like playing with a little bit of adjustments but like it's the color sign that the Mark I is hitting is at Nikon levels and when you look at the big three like the canons the son's and the nikons the color science has always been what Nikon got right Canon and Sony do good but Sony's big thing is autofocus um Canon is f is auto focus as well and their AI but Nikon Nikon had the color signs and the colors and the look and the feel and the vibe and the Mark I just hits it in my personal opinion that I am 100% running the Mark I from now on I'm going to still keep the Mark 1 as maybe like a third camera or a backup camera but whereas I thought initially I would be using like a kind of like a field space with the GoPro like to me the GoPro and the face cam Mark 1 are neck to neck based on the color science and how it handles low light whereas like if I turn off the lights here you would see immediately just like the difference here check this out all you're getting right now is a sliver of natural light like here let me pull up my other camera right now you're just getting this sliver of natural light coming through my window and then you have the blue and like the screens that's all the light I'm getting in this view right now look at the difference between the face cam the original the Mark I and my Nikon z30 like it's kind of crazy how they each handle like I you could really see the noise Factor like that artifact and like like dust in the image in the webcams whereas you don't see it as much with the um mirrorless camera but for how it's absorbing that light is kind of insane so what do you think at the end of the day is Elgato and their face cam lineup still the king of webcams or are they about to be dethroned did they not make enough change in my personal opinion I think if you're looking to get a webcam and you want something that's close to a DSLR but you don't have a lot of funds the face cam is the lineup to go with and the Mark I I would say hands down is probably the better bang for your buck than with the original face cam just because it's only like $30 more dollars and you just you get so much more to play with and a webcam like what you would do with a real camera now does this take out my $700 my $1,000 my $3,000 setup no not not yet but it's damn near close and that's half the battle to be honest with me hopefully you guys enjoyed this video if you liked it make sure you've subscribed to this channel for more content if you gotten this far can you leave me like a thumbs up emo actually no no no I take that back if you got this far I want you to leave like a race car emoji that you were able to survive the long endurance race and get to the end I'll shout you out on my next video If you do otherwise I'm Joe this has been moo XL and as always I'll see you guys next time I forgot what it say oh my God I forgot the catch Line shampoo is better no conditioner is better shampoo is better I'm not gonna really bang these over you am I insane

Channel: MatsuXL

Views: 1,134

Keywords: elgato, eglato facecam mk2, elgato facecam, facecam, mk2, facecam mk2, new elgato, the best webcam, elgato facecam comparison, facecam comparison, webcam, best webcam, webcam comparison, elgato facecam review, elgato facecam setup, facecam vs dslr, facecam vs mirrorless, facecam vs nikon, facecam hdr, facecam vs facecam mk2

Id: 7IAfoPC2ttU

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024