webcam with bigger field

[denno]

Greetings
I'm doing webcasts, singing and playing guitar. Just using the laptop built-in camera. As I am doing FB live stream, I want to be able to read the ongoing comments. If the computer is close enough for that, all that shows in the picture is top of my head to maybe top of the guitar. If I back up far enough to show singer-with-guitar (which I prefer) I cannot read the type.

I see webcams with WIDE fields of view. Is there one with a TALLER fov? (Cheap is good; Stanley Kubrick I'm not.)
I do see folks work the fov by having the camera kind of below, shooting up. Not the effect I'm after.

Thanks
denno

[Cornucopia]

What's your real budget?

Unless they are DSLR/Camcorders with capture adapters, or direct PTZ webcams, they won't have dynamically adjustable FOV, but rather a fixed FOV. And most of them are ~50-70-90degrees.
Then they have to have that mapped to the pixels of the sensor/capture app/display (which is usually 16:9, but could be 3:2, 4:3, 16:10, etc at usually 720, 1080, or 4k rez) and this will affect your perceived angle of view. BTW, when you say "TALLER", what it sounds like you're really wanting is something with a narrower FOV.

Plus, if you are really going for a certain framing, you could get by with a combination of using existing cam, backing up to further distance, then zooming in (digitally if necessary) and cropping sides to get a resultant narrower fov. Depending on the gear, perceived quality may suffer.

However, since you are tied to a specific distance using that built-in webcam, a way to improve things would be to use a combo of an external webcam (zoomable would be best here), your laptop/tablet, and a half-silvered mirror setup (aka "teleprompter"). Then you can get both close up to your laptop's screen to see clearly, AND get the FOV that you want, AND be still looking at the camera WHILE also looking at the laptop screen (so it doesn't look like you're looking off to the side). Best to get a mirroring feature in software so it will counteract the mirror, if you need to go that route. This is how the pros would do it.

Scott

[denno]

Whee-hooey!
If I slow that down sentence-by-sentence I can probably figure out what it all means. Way more technical than I was hoping for....
Whiny voice: but isn't there just a different cam......?
OK, I get it. And I watched Jorma Kaukonen do a streamed show. There were obviously three set cameras and someone at a "producer's board" switching them....a live broadcasting studio, in other words. And wouldn't that be nice!

Not sure I can tool up that far, though it might be no more than a few hundred dollars to do a cheap version of it. Or a few thousand....

For the time being I will probably not aim so high. But I thank you for the workaround and will likely read up on it till it does not seem so daunting.

At one point rather recently I was looking at some good quality performance vids and deciding it would be far easier to hire someone to capture me and my band in live performance.
That's kind of out the window (until there is a vaccine, I think) so maybe I gotta see if my wife and I can do something like this at home. Some live vids may be my extended career, because there is a hiatus in audience venues and I'm 73 already. (Jorma's 79, wottthehell.)

So thanks for the thought-provoking layout. I appreciate it.

I am still hoping for a simple webcam that has extended FOV vertically. (But not, of course, fisheye, with concomitant distortion.)
Question, then, are webcam FOVs more or less a standard angle vertically, and only expand horizontally in wide-angle? I ask because I did not see anything advertised on the vertical in a bit of browsing.

Thanks,
denno

[nogstoa]

I am a newbie. Not sure if this is where I belong...
I'm trying to use ArcSoft ShowBiz DVD2 to capture my home video from a Sony Handycam.

The ShowBiz keeps saying "Copyright Detected" and shutting off. It is ONLY home video.
I tried a You Tube video solution; but no luck.
Any suggestions or places to look?

Thank you for any help =)

[denno]

I googled it and got this video, which reports that problem as an error, and clearly explains a fix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CDXjF1bqtc

I have no idea if this really detects copyrighted material or is simply a default. The YT poster says he gets the error message even if he is capturing a blue screen.

The google was simply the name of the program with the word copyright appended.

----Hope this is all within the rules, folks!
denno

[nogstoa]

Thank you very much! =)

[denno]

Ever so welcome. I joined today, myself. Nice to be useful already.

[darkknight145]

Why not just use the camera in the laptop and connect the laptop to a big screen TV for viewing, you should then be able to read the comments etc

[Cornucopia]

@darkknightq45, good in some aspects, but there's still the issue I mentioned about eyeline/head-turning.

@denno, lenses are circular/spherical, excepting specialty ones which might be anamorphic, and so their amount of fov would have been the same whether vertical or horizontal. Except it is cut off like a cookie cutter by the shape of the sensor (ccd/cmos in cameras, and our eyeballs naturally). That basically leaves a rectangle remaining. But even though the vertical is less than the horizontal, their innate field curvature is the same.

Note that even afficionados have some difficulty with these concepts: https://shuttermuse.com/angle-of-view-vs-field-of-view-fov-aov/. In that link is another link that actually shows a table of angles of view and their commonly known, FF 35mm equivalents.

Good luck in you quest.

<edit>Teleprompters don't have to be that expensive - see: https://caddiebuddy.com/teleprompter-for-ipads-androids-and-phones/?sku=Teleprompter-N...iABEgIou_D_BwE
</edit>

Scott

[denno]

Thank you, Scott. Good mechanical view. I'll look at it all.
denno