When you’re looking for a webcam for streaming it can seem like there’s an infinite amount of options available. Some seem too cheap to be truly any good and some seem so expensive that you feel like you should be able to shoot the next blockbuster on them.
Some of the more expensive ones also feel like you’re paying a premium just for the bragging rights to be able to say that you have the latest tech, but this in most instances is silly…especially with something like a webcam where only you will actually see the device itself and no one else will see which brand logo is on the box. Functionality is key, and it’s on its we will look at the Logitech Streamcam today. It’s not the cheapest webcam on the market by a long stretch and some of its features feel more gimmick, but these aside is it a good camera? Let’s find out.
Released in February 2020, people have now had a full year to try out the Streamcam and put it through it’s paces. The most important thing to look at here is it’s picture quality, and the Streamcam does a great job. With Full HD 1080p capture at 60fps, the image is sharp and clear and decent if not perfect in differing lighting conditions. Occasionally I’ve experienced what feels like slightly off colour, and have had to play with my lights to get the perfect green screen effect, but this is to be expected with most camera set ups.
A neat feature of the camera is its smart autofocus which uses AI to track your face. As a real world example of how this works when I stream shows I will periodically use a hand mic as a prop as if I am interviewing a guest and holding a mic up to my camera as a live interviewer may do to to a live guest at a press event. When I do this the camera will adjust the focus to show the microphone in sharp focus which looks great and you’ll see my head and body with a cool blurred effect in the background. If I want to play up my reaction to something the person being interviewed says I will then poke my head to the side so the camera catches my face fully and the AI autofocus does its thing and gives the effect of a pull focus camera trick to show my reaction. It’s a clever thing I’ve been able to make happen just by playing with the camera and taking advantage of the focus feature, but not all webcams can do it.
A slightly more gimmicky feature is the ability to rotate the camera to go from landscape to portrait view. You do this by physically removing the camera from the clip to attach the camera to your laptop and turning it on its side. In the future it’s be great if such a function was either done in software to change the aspect ratio, or mechanically to tilt the camera which can be controlled again by software. For now though it does require you to physically change the orientation of the device, band this isn’t a big deal to achieve.
The uses of the vertical orientation of the camera do feel slightly more limited, because most software that will use the webcam are designed with landscape mode as the focus. Instagram as an example is geared towards vertical camera orientation for live streaming, but this feature is only available from smart devices and as the Streamcam is for a home computer or laptop this really isn’t usable for instagram. Facebook also offers live streaming, and YouTube as well, so there are options for vertical streaming, but you would have to question why you choose to do so vertically rather than horizontally.
If you just want to add yourself into your gaming streams then using the vertical stream option may allow you to see a full higher resolution of yourself on screen then if you were cropping a landscape image, and another option you could use the portrait mode for would be to simply record vertical videos for Instagram/Facebook/TikTok on your computer and edit them to upload on mobile later.
Coming back to adding your camera to gaming streams, its worth noting that whilst it’s great that you have the option for Full HD and 60fps, there’s also the downside that comes with that. Unless you’re really serious about your online gaming and stream to Twitch or YouTube as a business or serious hobby, you may find that these features cause some issues in the short term. Streaming Full HD and 60fps do put more strain on your computer, CPU and internet uploads then if you were to lower the resolution and perhaps stream at 30fps. If you find that you constantly drop frames and or lose internet connection it could be that the Streamcam is pushing your setup and that it may be better to lesson these features to get better performance. This said, as internet speeds get better and tech improves you’ll not have any issues with this.
The audio captured by the Streamcam is more then suitable compared to a lot of webcams out there and is a huge step up from the built in mic you probably have in your PC. For transparency I do use a separate high quality podcasting mic with my setup rather then the Streamcam for my main audio, but on occasion I’ve switched to the Streamcam when I’ve had a mic issue and have continued onwards just fine.
You can also use the device with Logitech Capture, a software which allows you to ad filters, do transitions and play around with camera tracking. One thing that I found is that if you use a green screen and virtual backgrounds which wont move, the camera tracking is likely to make your audience feel nauseated as you’ll be zooming in and moving all over the screen without the audience being able to tell why without your actual background visible.
I’ve been very happy with the results from using the Streamcam, and whilst I don’t think it produces as clear an image as you’d get by connecting a DSLR up to your PC with a capture card like the Elgato Camlink, it is an option which is literally hundreds cheaper then buying those from scratch. If on the other hand you already have a Nikon or Cannon DSLR laying around, connecting them to your PC as a webcam will give you a significantly better picture quality even if they do take a little more time and effort to set up.
If you’re serious about streaming online and wants. Easy to set up and easy to use webcam that gives you a great performance in picture quality and has good audio quality too this is a highly recommended purchase.
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