I was hoping to use this to do guitar lessons, with plug-ins running on my Mac processing the sound from my guitar (these won't run on my iPhone) but unfortunately it looks like it won't work...
By default the field of view is extremely close and narrow, and there's no way to "zoom out" and get the full field of the lens like you can in the camera app on the iPhone. In this default view you have to have the actual phone extremely far away from you to use it for demonstrating anything with a guitar, because the frame is only big enough to have just your head in it and nothing else.
The only way to "zoom out" is to turn on center stage, however the algorithm that they're using is so bad that merely looking down at my guitar while playing it (and not actually moving my head or body) causes the zoom algorithm to go all wonky and it continues to zoom and pan all over the place even though I am sitting still the entire time. This is so bad that it's unusable.
There's also no way to actually use the wide angle lens -- desk view requires you to use an app that shares your screen, you can not actually use the desk view as a video source.
Another problem is the lack of ability to do vertical style videos for Instagram reels or YouTube shorts -- when you physically turn the phone, the video is algorithmically processed to not turn, and looks exactly the same.
I understand why Apple made all these design decisions, 90% of regular users will love this and think it's more or less easy and works great for their web conferencing apps -- but I was still hoping that there would be a way to get access to more advanced video options, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that is the case
Looks like for me, this is not going to be a replacement for a premium quality webcam.
By default the field of view is extremely close and narrow, and there's no way to "zoom out" and get the full field of the lens like you can in the camera app on the iPhone. In this default view you have to have the actual phone extremely far away from you to use it for demonstrating anything with a guitar, because the frame is only big enough to have just your head in it and nothing else.
The only way to "zoom out" is to turn on center stage, however the algorithm that they're using is so bad that merely looking down at my guitar while playing it (and not actually moving my head or body) causes the zoom algorithm to go all wonky and it continues to zoom and pan all over the place even though I am sitting still the entire time. This is so bad that it's unusable.
There's also no way to actually use the wide angle lens -- desk view requires you to use an app that shares your screen, you can not actually use the desk view as a video source.
Another problem is the lack of ability to do vertical style videos for Instagram reels or YouTube shorts -- when you physically turn the phone, the video is algorithmically processed to not turn, and looks exactly the same.
I understand why Apple made all these design decisions, 90% of regular users will love this and think it's more or less easy and works great for their web conferencing apps -- but I was still hoping that there would be a way to get access to more advanced video options, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that is the case
Looks like for me, this is not going to be a replacement for a premium quality webcam.
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