Hello Hunters, it’s Aidan, founder of Reincubate here.
I'm excited to have just launched Camo. It'll give you quality close to that of using a $1,500+ DSLR setup on calls.
Earlier this year our team moved to working remotely, and in video calls everyone looked pretty bad, irrespective of whether they were on built-in Mac webcams or third-party ones.
People told me the best quality required using a DSLR camera and a device to connect it, which together would cost over $1,500. I tried a handful of high-end webcams, but the software sucked, the colours were cold, and they kept refocusing in calls. I noticed on the odd occasion when people joined calls directly from their iPhones or iPads, they looked incomparably better.
Category-leading webcams are… noticably worse than an iPhone 7. This makes sense: six weeks of Apple’s R&D spend tops Logitech's annual gross revenue.
Thus began my journey to build Camo: an iPhone has one of the world’s best cameras in it, so could we make it work as a webcam? I shared an early build of Camo with photography expert Jeff Carlson, and he put put together a detailed comparison.
Camo has a perpetually free version with 720p video (colour balance, focus, light, etc. add more than resolution over a certain point), a choice or front or back lens, and a small watermark. No registration required. There's an optional upgrade to use all the lenses, change resolutions, adjust the image and more. Camo does all the processing on your phone to keep your Mac quiet and cool. Oh, and we bought all of the stands we could find on Amazon and reviewed them here, in case you need one.
We're starting work on 1.1 now, adding support for portrait mode / bokeh, Windows and more. I’d love to read your feedback, and thanks for stopping by. 👋
Quite cool! But I thought it would stream to the Mac via wifi. Having the cable connected make me not know how to place the phone to stand up somehow..
@frexuz Thanks Kristian! We focused on using a cable first: that way your phone won't run out of charge if you get stuck on a call for hours, and it helps keep it cooler if we're not hammering the Wi-Fi chip. I was worried about having to remotely debug problems with people's Wi-Fi routers, as a really solid network will be required.
That said, Wi-Fi is coming soon, and our roundup of iPhone stands finishes with a suggestion for an easily improvised one. 🙂 (There aren't any affiliate links in there.)
@frexuz Try velcro -- i put it on my phone and back of monitor, works great
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@frexuz@afit How is that Wifi feature going? WFH has hit me hard and I've been looking for ways to have a webcam. The app is life saving, and having the Wifi feature would have my desk cable free. Now there is MagSafe for iPhones now and already have a charging stand totally saves the battery draining issue.
@sametgungoren Hopefully soon! Our Windows build is good enough for our internal calls, but we want it more robust and polished before sharing it. 😬
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My desk is by a window, meaning I get a lot of light on one side of my face. My iMac camera is AWFUL with that kind of lighting. I got something salvageable from getting some software to manually force the camera's brightness down, but it was still annoyingly poor.
I saw this software being reviewed by 9to5mac yesterday and gave it a go this morning. Amazing!! I instantly bought the pro version after making sure it worked as good as I needed it to. Very, very good.
I've noticed a bit of a bug when changing lenses and having control over exposure duration - If I correct the exposure, move to another lens, sometimes I lose ability to change exposure. Moving the slider up and down results in no adjustments. I haven't worked out the exact way to get it working again, but usually if I switch lenses enough again I can manage to get it to work. Also, I'm unsure if I should be able to change ISO? For me it's entirely greyed out (I'm on iPhone 11 Pro).
Overall I'm very impressed with this. For me, it's completely convenient and the fact the software is well thought-out with a smart user interface makes me feel like I'm not just finding a hacky solution. The feed is lag free and works as if you're using any external webcam.
I want to see this product innovated and updated, it already has great potential and results, so I'm hoping for more to come!
@simongabriel Thank you Simon! We've had our share of launch day drama and have a small bug or two to work out. We'll get those fixes out just as soon as we're through the next App Store review. Really appreciate your enthusiasm and support! 🙏
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@afit Thanks for the reply! RE: Me not being able to control ISO, is that normal?
@mischu Hallo Michael, that's OK! We made a perpetually free version as well, and I hope you enjoy it. I wrote about why we use a subscription here: https://reincubate.com/support/c...
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@afit Hi, Aidan,
I understand all that completely. Unfortunately, and this is the case with all providers - companies forget that not all users use software equally intensively. In other words. The individual needs are not considered.
I think you get everything with the Subscription Plan. OKAY. But for everyone else, you could also offer individual modules or permanently activate them for a fixed price ...
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This looks great! I've been looking for something like this most of the year. Looking forward to the Windows release.
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