Canon now lets you use its cameras as a webcam with amazing video quality.
Interested in improving the video quality of your own Zoom frame tenfold? If you’ve got a recent Canon mirrorless, DSLR, or PowerShot camera, you can now use it as a webcam and put everyone else on your video call to shame. As noted by DPReview, the company has released a beta of “EOS Webcam Utility” for Windows 10 that lets you plug in any of the below supported cameras over USB and have it serve as your PC’s webcam. And this should work fine for most of the big video conferencing options, whether you’re using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, or another service.
“Built by Canon software developers, this beta version software helps consumers to improve their video appearance while using popular video conferencing applications in the market, delivering clarity and high-image quality,” Canon wrote in its press release.
If you’ve got a fairly high-end digital camera that’s not made by Canon, this might be something you can pull off on your own with an HDMI capture card or stick — assuming that your camera allows for clean HDMI video output. My old friend Evan Rodgers at Input recently gave that a shot. And it’s pretty striking, though not surprising, how much more cinematic your Zoom window will look compared to everyone else when you’re using premium glass that a built-in webcam can’t hold a candle to.
Canon’s solution cuts out the need for any extra devices or accessories beyond a single USB cable, so if you’ve got one of the listed cameras, this is definitely worth a try. Sorry, Mac users; there’s no EOS Webcam Utility for Apple’s software quite yet, but you’ve still got the option of using a capture card with a wider selection of cameras.