Elgato Facecam - Video so Good it's Scary

Let's get serious here; working from home - or at least hybrid working - isn't going anywhere.

So unless your job is a one-person operation, it's going to require some online collaboration at some point. Until now, perhaps you've been making do with that cheap little webcam you bought a million years ago and hardly ever used, pre-pandemic.

Or worse, you've been peering into your laptop's built-in camera, leaving whoever's watching at the other end with a blurry, poorly lit image of you that freezes regularly and makes you look like you're part of the witness protection programme.

If you're a regular streamer, presumably you've already taken steps to remedy this situation. For the rest of us, it's well past time we lifted our webcam game.

Over the last couple of months, I've gone from having never heard of Elgato to considering it a go-to brand for content creation accessories.

The sorry state of built-in webcams on laptops, desktops and tablets has been a constant source of frustration for me over the years. Often I've lamented the fact even the most basic smartphones usually have better selfie-cams than those that come with your computer, yet these are the very tools we require to make working from home a success.

So I was pretty excited to get my hands (and face) on the Elgato Facecam.

I have to admit, I haven't even considered a dedicated webcam for years. After all, almost everything has a camera built-in now, right? I even have smart speakers I can make video calls on. But... as I just said, invariably those cameras are all rubbish.

Just like everyone else in the world, I've been producing more video content than ever lately. I figured the Elgato Facecam might help me put my best foot (and face) forward.

What might surprise you is the size of this device; given your bog-standard laptop webcam peeps out of a tiny hole at the top of your display, being confronted with a camera that's 58mm x 80mm x 48mm is well... confronting.

I assume this rather large form-factor is mostly due to the Elgato Prime Lens, which is in fact eight precisely engineered glass elements resulting in a superb shooting window with an f/2.4 aperture. The glass has been painstakingly produced to reduce any kind of distortion or colour alteration in an effort to provide the most neutral, natural image possible. This is aided by many layers of anti-reflective coatings so issues like light flare are kept to a minimum.

The included mount is simple yet effective, allowing you to clip the Facecam onto just about anything; monitors, laptop lids, tablets - even handsets if you really need to. Alternatively, you can forget the mount completely and use a tripod or other stand via the universal 1/4-inch thread.

There's a hard plastic privacy cap if that's something that concerns you. It certainly clunks reassuringly into place leaving you absolutely reassured nothing will be broadcast while it's in place.

The Facecam connects via a very generous two-metre USB-C to USB-A cable but this isn't quite a plug-and-play situation. I found I had to download and install Elgato's Camera Hub app before my Mac recognised the external camera I'd attached. Camera Hub is simple to navigate, yet offers a comprehensive range of settings you can choose to leave on auto or tinker around with at your will.

Everything from zoom and contrast to white balance and noise reduction can be adjusted, which gives you a significantly greater level of customisation than that of most default, pre-installed cameras. The most user-friendly part of this process is when you've tweaked the settings to attain the perfect image, you can save them - not to your connected device but onto the flash memory in the Facecam itself. This means if you're using the camera on several different devices, the settings will stay the same. That's pretty useful because different screens will show your footage in different ways, so only having to set up your camera once means you can film with the confidence you'll end up with consistent footage across all your shots.

You can film up to 1080p at a full 60fps. The Sony STARVIS CMOS sensor and Elgato's Advanced Image Engine combine to provide incredibly detailed, noise-free images, even in low light. In fact, I've found the quality to be so accurate, I've dialled back things like contrast and sharpness considerably to save my viewers the true horror of witnessing my visage in its all-too-real, blotchy, lined, cratered, haggard and disturbing glory. 

Yes, my conclusion is the video quality from the Facecam is too good. Nobody wants to see the real me - especially not me. I've come to realise the blurry, shadowy footage from lesser cameras was doing me a favour. Sadly, thanks to Facecam, now I've been revealed to the world as the wreck I truly am. Thanks very much, Elgato.

    

    

Click here for more information on the Elgato Facecam.