Elgato's New Webcam -- The Facecam

well it's official as of today you can make a whole stream setup built entirely out of elgato stuff since today they announced well so many things so many things july 15th is elgato day forever i'm calling it but the big two that i think will be the most sought after devices are the wave xlr which is another contender to completely destroy the go xlr again more info on that in the other video and this the face cam and if the review sheet they sent over for this thing is accurate at all this is a next level webcam let's unbox it and find out let's take a look in the box we got full hd this is a 1080 60 webcam low latency uncompressed video which means two things one there's no delay between your webcam and the computer also it means that there's no processing power required on the other end to decompress the image and apparently the elgato prime lens is really good we'll find that out for ourselves and then one other notable mention on the back is the elgato flash memory which means that your settings save directly to your camera it's just a nice touch i don't know why all cameras don't do that probably because it makes it more expensive i can answer my own question so as with almost everything elgato does uh elgato of course paired this up with software which we actually still have to install and we'll be checking out during this video but if we look back at their wave microphone the microphone itself was good it was nothing special what made the wave microphone special is the software that came with it this also comes with what looks like bonkers software it's like elgato figured out years ago that what every company was missing was software which you can make and distribute digitally and just makes their products like 10 times better all right let's pull this thing out let's pull it let's pull it out the other way oh nice little lens cap there which i can't figure out how to take off oh yeah yeah you just pull oh that is a fat boy lens it's a lot lighter than i expected which is fine not a big deal doesn't feel as chunky as something like the avermedia so you got tilting forward and back you got leaning left and right and of course you can tighten it so it doesn't turn which is kind of nice you got removable usb type c on the back that comes with how long is this cable let's see it's always a big test here how how long is usb cable it's removable which means length isn't a make or break situation like it was with the logitech stream cam that's a good size cable it's probably what seven seven feet or something usp type c to type a love it when they do that so it's got a 24 millimeter equivalent lens which means that if you were to set it side by side with a full frame camera it's called a full frame equivalent and set this one to 24 millimeters like this they would get the exact same field of view for those of you running like a sony a5100 or one of those crop sensor sony cameras it's the same as your 16 millimeter lens so that really popular sigma 16 mil f 1.4 this has the same field of view which is supposedly 82 degrees the last couple times i unboxed webcams i complained that they weren't wide enough and i still would prefer a wider camera i like to use ultra wide lenses on my main talking camera but then when i go into gameplay i've actually switched to a more narrow one i've actually gone to a 35 mil lens and i hold it vertically which ends up turning out really cool so yeah field of view is definitely personal preference it is a little bit wider than like the c920 or the logitech stream cam not quite as wide as the avermedia what's it called the p513 this is that is really a thick boy lens really happy about that and this thing of course can come right off and you can attach this to a multi-mount or really anything that uses the same threads but let's plug this in and see how it looks you guys ready you ready to see all right and this is it this is the elgato facecam before i give my opinions at all start writing a comment i will give you like three seconds to formulate an opinion start writing it are you good i think this is honestly the best webcam i've ever seen i am in a relatively low light situation i don't even have my light on in front of me i am sitting in front of a window but it's not a direct light on me and it's a basement window down in one of those holes within a 10-foot deep basement like just to point out the brightness of the room this is the camera we've been using for this shoot i turned off the light it's just the window that's like 10 feet away from me i am incredibly impressed with the webcam quality i want to see what it looks like at a gaming setup there is a little bit of an advantage to this camera because i'm going to be straight with you it didn't look this good when i first plugged it in it looks good just not this good and that's the elgato camera hub and i want to talk about that the problem i've had with almost all webcams isn't the quality of the lens or the sensor the camera itself it's the fact that it's so difficult to control even though the one camera that comes with software the logitech stream cam and their logi capture software it's terrible they've got these weird arbitrary sliders that don't really mean anything and at the end of the day if your camera is exposing improperly there's not really a way to change that when i first opened the webcam it actually looked like this which still looks pretty good but it's definitely auto exposing a little bit too bright my face is a little bit washed out and you can see that's because the iso which it reads out for you which is the only webcam i've ever seen that actually reads out the isl which by the way if you don't know the iso is essentially the digital brightness of the camera so i set it off of automatic and then what i can do is i can drag this down all the way down to 100 which now gives me a very properly exposed camera you can see there's no spots on my forehead that are completely blotched out which is usually where the culprit of overexposure is i've never seen webcam software give this much control you even have other controls in here like contrast saturation sharpness that personally i would rather adjust inside an obs filter itself that way it's a little bit more convenient to go in and adjust them on the fly while i'm live if i absolutely have to if you want you can even zoom in and out of course this is a digital zoom so as you zoom in you're going to lose resolution you can change the video resolution if you'd like to a handful of different formats and then of course as i mentioned during the unboxing you get all your settings the way you want it and you hit the little save button right there and they're saved to your device so which is what i did earlier when i brought this over to my gaming setup in fact i didn't even have to install the software saved directly to the camera so far huge fan however we do need to give this a proper test let's put this up against two other cameras in a similar price range this camera being 199 in us dollars let's put it up against the avermedia pw513 which i believe right now you can also get for the same price 199 as well as the logitech stream cam which what does that go for right now which it looks like the price has actually been lowered down to 149. let's begin the test [Music] now [Music] so [Music] so let's give an overview the goods the bads and if you'd like to see by the way what this looks like in action and form your own opinion i'm actually gonna be live with this right now as well at least as this video goes live i'm going to be using this as well as the wave xlr and just kind of see what a stream using entirely elgato production equipment looks like so as soon as you're done watching this come on and jump in the stream link in the description below youtube.com harry seller but in a nutshell this is a very high quality webcam the lens is fantastic it gives a very crisp image the colors and the dynamic range are fantastic it even works really well in low light because it's got a fantastic sony sensor built into it but the biggest thing the biggest thing is the software the camera quality itself is fantastic it's probably the best webcam i've seen but the ability to go in and adjust shutter speed and iso those are dslr features it's just what we've grown to expect of elgato take good hardware but then combine it with powerful and intuitive software and turn it into something ten times greater it's it's like the whole one plus one equals 11 situation and by the way sam also did a video on this webcam but went into a little bit more heavy detail on how to tweak this thing to make it look just incredible so i'll link that down below but the negatives the thing i know all of you guys have been waiting for i wouldn't necessarily call them objective negatives however they are things you should be aware of before you buy because there's going to be a certain group of people that some of these things might be deal breakers for number one no microphone and really not a huge deal i've never actually seen a streamer use webcam audio because it sounds so terrible and i'm sure most of us actually prefer it if the webcam builders take the microphone costs and put it into making a better image anyway number two it has a fixed focus meaning there's no autofocus on here instead there's a set focus range from 12 inches or one foot to 47 inches or almost four feet as long as you're within that range you'll be in focus any closer to that or further from that and you'll be out of focus again the advantages to doing this is saving on costs so they can put those costs into things like the sensor and the lens but also it doesn't do that focus hunting wow thing that you see a lot of cheap webcams with crappy autofocus do but just in case you plan on making this a room camera where you planned on being eight feet away just know it's not ideal another one that's kind of a personal a weird opinion of mine it's very light which i know can be kind of nice sitting on top of like a laptop or a monitor but you should know when you pull this out it does feel kind of cheap it doesn't change the quality of the image it's not going to hurt your stream at all but i don't want you to pull this out and expect this like thick beefy thing which i really like the feel of and you're like oh my gosh this is this feels like plastic and lastly the biggest criticism i've given on almost all my webcam reviews and i want to make sure i'm being fair here and saying it to this one as well is it worth two hundred dollars when it's not upgradable don't get me wrong it's not overpriced this hardware is worth two hundred dollars but if you ever plan on upgrading to a mirrorless camera like this going into a cam link you're gonna have to start from scratch and this can become a secondary camera if you really want one or it becomes a paperweight we've done videos showing the quality difference between a used gopro and a cam link for 180 bucks versus a 200 webcam and in almost every situation the gopro does look better and it's a little cheaper however it is a jankier setup you are using old used hardware sometimes it doesn't work as intended there is an advantage to the simplicity of plug and play that you get with a fancy webcam however if you go the gopro route and you plan on upgrading to a mirrorless camera you can toss the 40 gopro and you already have the cam link which is 130 ready for this to plug into for that reason i've always been very skeptical and i've had a hard time heavily endorsing a webcam but i also recognize that i've worked with cameras for years i'm very comfortable with them and very comfortable troubleshooting them when something goes wrong if you want something simple and easy to use you're looking for a webcam there's just nothing like this right now elgato was elgato they did their thing this is another elgato product they know how streamers work that's all i hope you found this helpful hope you found it interesting if you have any questions anything i missed feel free to leave them in the comments down below or jump into my live stream again i'm streaming right now using this thing so come and check out and see how it looks and as always happy streaming

Channel: Alpha Gaming

Views: 181,114

Rating: 4.9578071 out of 5

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, camera, mic, pc, lights, lighting, webcam, elgato, starting, new, algorithm, learning, start, make, videos, first, gear, lens, facecam, sony, streamcam, logitech

Id: sy7XWagX9Hg

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021