ELP-USBFHD08S-LC1100

I have another ELP camera, and my main complaint about it was that the lens is so wide-angle, it can't help but distort the picture. Not the case with this one. It has a narrower angle of view, but if you take videos that have straight lines in them, the lines will be straight in the video. This camera will work with any software that works with webcams, so Zoom and OBS are definitely usable. However, the main feature I was interested in is the high frame rates, and these do work, if you can find an application that lets you set the frame rate to these high speeds. Which neither Zoom nor OBS can do. The only thing I've got that does support these frame rates is ffmpeg, which is a utility used mainly for converting video formats, but which is also useful for capturing video in a file, and for streaming. Just google "ffmpeg capture webcam" and add either "windows", "macos", or "linux", and you will find lots of help on how to use it. This is just a circuit board with the camera, lens, and USB cable (which is USB2 by the way), so you'll want some way of mounting it to protect the chips and wires. I haven't mounted mine yet, but will probably go with the "plexiglas sandwich" approach, where pieces of acrylic sheet cut to just a bit larger than the circuit board are mounted on both sides with the camera in the middle, using screws and standoffs. A 3D-printed enclosure would be almost a no-brainer, so that might be even better. I don't plan on using this in rough environments, so it won't be exactly a replacement for a GoPro.

Almost passed on this feeling 2mpx was kinda low, but opted to try it. Got it for recording / streaming my 3D printer and saving videos/pictures for time-lapse videos. Out of the box and just plug and play it had a really nice picture that tracked motion fairly well. It seems to find focus fairly well too, but I haven't honestly been able to test it too extensively yet - I'll definitely update once I do get to. Totally would recommend checking this out if you wanted a simple plug and play USB webcam without a shell for custom casing and mounting. I tried taking apart a cheap "Action camera" in the past and it simply wouldn't work w/o its screen connected too and was a bit of a hassle to keep everything connected securely in the wild. This one definitely doesn't have the latter problem, nor the former given it doesn't have or come with a screen. (Attached a short video using it no special lighting or settings, just plugged into a USB port on my PC and recorded with Windows Camera app).

So really pretty surprised with this camera for the price. I wanted to have a camera I can use while working on electronic projects and repair so plan to get a couple lenses and an arm. Plugged this into my MacBook Pro 16" 2021 running MacOS Ventura and simply used a USB to USB-C adapter and it just worked. No drivers or any additional software was needed. I attached a video from PhotoBooth but sorry for the shakiness. Looks like this will do really great once I get a good lens and a lens I can focus easier, but for the price I don't think you can beat it. Actually went to the companies website and hope maybe I can try one of the better cameras that might be more suitable for my projects.

This product is one about which I am conflicted. On the one hand, it definitely does do 1080p60 and 720p120, but, on the other hand, the picture quality is mediocre at best. It has fine detail resolution, but there's quite a bit of noise in the image and the colors appear very washed out. Very little contrast, and messing with the adjustment sliders in software did not help matters at all, as far as I can tell. It is also, at least on Windows, only usable with automatic exposure and brightness, since turning off auto exposure made the picture way too dark and adjusting gain did almost nothing. This is a bit of an issue because it tends to blow out or over-expose the brightest parts of the video, which is usually whatever you have the camera pointed at, such as a well-lit face. Perhaps with better software this could be mitigated. An old GoPro has better picture quality. I mean the ones you can find used on eBay for like $30, like a Hero 3 Silver or similar. Maybe not an equitable comparison, but it's frustrating that a ~15 year old GoPro has better picture quality than whatever this is trying to be. If what you need is high framerate and you're not looking for a webcam but a project camera, this is a neat little product. For most people, I think this is probably a pass.