Canon Camera in Zoom

ethanz

1DX II
CR Pro
Apr 12, 2016
1,194
510
ethanzentz.com
Hello all,
I am looking at getting a camera for someone who is not very savvy to use for Zoom video meetings. The camera will be fairly close to the subject, but I need the video to be sharp and show detail, so they can't just use a web cam. What would be a good Canon camera for them to use? As well, they might want to use it to record videos outside of Zoom. I know Canon has the 30 minute limit in many older cameras, is that still a thing for them? Looking at under $1,000. Does the Canon EOS webcam utility play nicely with Zoom on a Mac?

Thank you!
 

dcm

Enjoy the gear you have!
CR Pro
Apr 18, 2013
1,088
846
Colorado, USA
For the past year, I've given several live lectures each week in my online computer science courses, pre-recorded introductions for labs, and attended staff meetings. I tried a few different setups to establish a video brand that I use in all online tools. The floating head image is a screen capture from a lecture prelude while ZZ Tops' Sharp Dressed Man was playing. I have other personas as you might imagine. Students often show up early for my lectures to listen to "my bands" and pose questions in the video chat ;-) I found 3 things were necessary to create a great Zoom/Teams feed.

The EOS web cam utility (WCU) works fine on a mac if you have a supported camera. And enough horsepower to process/feed the video to Zoom, Teams, or other tools. I used the EOS WCU with an M6MII on MS Teams and Zoom, but for most purposes my webcam is sufficient. WCU swamped my 2 core MacBook Pro, but my 6 core Mac Mini handles it fine. I now have a CamLink 4K so I can use either Mac. I have been quite happy with that soution when using a camera instead of a webcam, but who really needs 4K from a 1DXII with L glass?

Since my video feed is often a thumbnail while sharing my screen and video feeds are seldom smooth, I find a good quality microphone for an audio source to be much more important that a great video source. The clarity is particularly important when using live closed captions and automatic transcriptions which I do with all of my content. International students also appreciate the clarity. My students say I have a "radio voice". I'm currently using a Shure MV7.

The other important aspect is lighting. I shoot in a darkened room with video lights so I can control the lighting. There is no backdrop behind me or fancy computer program manipulating the image. For my setup, it's all about lighting only the subject to remove all of the distractions behind me. I use three lights
 
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dcm

Enjoy the gear you have!
CR Pro
Apr 18, 2013
1,088
846
Colorado, USA
Thanks. Do you think a 2012 macbook pro is good enough for WCU?

It may depend on what else you are trying to run at the same time. My 2016 MacBook Pro 2.9GHz Dual Core i5 with 8Gb of memory was busy running just WCU. In dedicated mode it was usable. If I wanted to run something else at the same time the system got sluggish.
 
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PCM-madison

CR Pro
Dec 9, 2013
159
197
Thanks. Do you think a 2012 macbook pro is good enough for WCU?
I use the Canon WCU with a 2012 MacBook Pro and EOS RP. It works fine, but there are some caveats. If you want to use the desktop clients for zoom, Webex, etc, some versions of Mac OS work, but the newest ones don't (works in browser version only).
 
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