A couple of years back I got into the whole use a DSLR as a webcam thing. At the time, I used a Canon T7i. That was a bulky beast to use for a webcam, but it did work nicely for a while. The main thing I didn’t like about using the T7i was:
- It’s a big bulky beast for such a little job
- Two wires coming out: battery passthrough cable, and HDMI
- No autofocus (screwed up “clean HDMI”)
So eventually I switched to the Sony ZV-1, which is way smaller and rather designed for fancy “vlogger” usage. A lot of people like this camera, but not everyone. What’s good about it:
- High-quality 4k output with nice bokeh and such
- Much smaller. Easier to mount and deal with.
Bad stuff:
- It’s got USB out, but it’s not super reliable. Better to use the HDMI out and a Camlink (way smoother video), but that means I’m back to two cables out of the camera.
- The USB still has to be there to charge the battery, it’s not a battery passthrough. This means the battery degrades over time, and will randomly shut off during usage. I’m on battery #2 after about 6 months, but battery #2 (third party) isn’t behaving well already.
- Looks designed to be a point-and-shoot camera, not really a webcam.
With the battery issues on the ZV-1, I was inspired to see if I could find something better. There seems to be a new-generation of webcams coming out, but the Mevo was ready to buy already, so I went for that. I find Logitech to be a pretty good brand and the website for it was pretty convincing.
The main thing for me: one cable. Just one USB-C cable out of it and to computer, that would be great.
Unfortunately, even just setting it up kinda sucked. It doesn’t just show up as a webcam, you have to be running special software.
Notice it says “Wired Webcam Mode”. I didn’t realize this, but using a cable to connect the camera is a “Beta” feature, and the only way to turn that on is to also install an app on your phone to connect to the camera and turn it on there. So two software installs just to use the camera as a “normal” webcam. I would have maybe been OK with that, except check the quality compared to the ZV-1.
I’m sure the Mevo has some nice uses. It’s definitely marketed toward sort of lower-budget multi-camera out-in-the-world shooting, and perhaps it’s great for that. But it’s just not good enough to a webcam, especially at the $400 pricetag.
