Sources are listed at the end of the post. If you do any reasonable amount of webcam'ing, you can do yourself a lot of favors by getting a collapsible background. I am talking about "visually clean," not "actually clean." Your basement may remain trashed.
I turned on the lights in the background of this pic to prove a point, too: You give the webcam white in the foreground, and it'll even disregard various light source colors in the background.Īnd you thought white clothing was just for innocence and purity. And no more meandering through the rainbow spectrum while you are talking, either. Give it some real whiteness, and your exposure/color problems are solved. The webcam is gonna try to make something white whether it actually white or not. (I only point that out because I tend to dress far more casual than even this.) Or it can be one of those "wife beater" undershirts that the guys in the trailer parks always seem to be wearing when they get busted on Cops. It can be a nice, crisp white oxford, as I am sporting. Solution: Wear a white shirt and you'll get good color and exposure when you webcam. If you do not give it some white right up front in the frontal light zone, no nice balance for you. It takes the brightest thing in the frame, assumes you want it to be white, tries to make adjustments until that happens. That's how auto white balance/auto-exposure works.
HYPACK TURN OFF VISUAL QUALITY PATCH
And it only needs one thing to work: A patch of white. You see, the webcam is just trying to give me good color and exposure. The two pictures immediately above were taken about a second apart, in the same lighting conditions. What is really going on here is that the camera's auto exposure/white balance is going all screwy, trying to lock onto a color balance. Here's a little secret: Sometimes, when I am using my webcam, I like to clinch my buttocks tightly together and see how red I can make my face. But if you do wear glasses, it might be nice if people could actually see your eyes. If you do not wear glasses, this is not a critical step. That, along with the lamp acting as a dominant frontal light source, will kill the reflection. Solution: Adjust the monitor brightness and/or contrast down to the threshold at which you can just barely see comfortably (just while you are using your webcam.) Just adding light (other then that from the monitor) has partially solved the computer glare problem. Have you been noticing how the room lights appear to rise and fall based on the intensity of our front light? Kill the Computer's Reflection in Your Eyes
I usually prefer diffused for extra control and the fact that it retains more light intensity.ģ. Your call on whether to diffuse the light or bounce it. I killed the background lights because the dimmer front source made them appear too bright in the back. This makes for a bigger, softer and dimmer light source. Variation: Turn the bare lamp around and bounce it off of the wall, if there is one. Some differences: The shiny highlight in my forehead thankfully lessens in intensity, which is due to the larger apparent size of the light source.Īlso, the typing paper knocks down the brightness of the lamp, which means that the auto exposure adjustment causes (a) the background and (b) the computer reflection to come up some. I just taped the paper to the open front of the lamp and the harsh light is now softened. Just two cents worth of office supplies gets you a softer light source. Solution: Diffuse the light with typing paper.
And you'll notice that the bright front light causes the webcam to lower the overall exposure, dropping the background down a tad.īut the bright, harsh light of the engineer's lamp is not doing me any favors. As you'll see in a minute, your webcam will auto-magically adjust for it when you help out a little. But for these purposes it doesn't really matter what kind of bulb you have. Mine happens to be one of those adjustable engineering lamps, with a CFL bulb. Solution: Turn on your flippin' desk lamp. Can you guess what color my desktop is? Did you guess blue?Ĭompounding that is the fact that the background light is brighter than the foreground light. This is worst possible case, IMO, and exactly how the majority of webcam'ers operate.Īs seen here, we have the computer monitor acting as our light source. For Pete's Sake, Don't Use Your Monitor as a Light Source
That said, here are five common webcam problems and their easy fixes.ġ. And the webcam is an easy way to play around with lighting and see instant results. We're talking basic, low-end-theory off-camera lighting, folks. Which is such a shame, really, when you consider how easy this is to fix. We're taking a little detour today to talk lighting in a context other than still photos.Įach day, untold bandwidth is being used to transmit really bad webcam image quality.
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