tht said: Hence, it's basically a lot of media noise. The media needs to have a controversy, something that induces stress and engagement. For the Apple Studio display, the webcam is the only point of mediocre-ness, so they are going to play it up as much as possible. The price could have been a big point of criticism, but since the only real comparative product is the LG UF27 with a MSRP $1300, the $1600 price isn't that far off.
As someone said previously, the camera in question is the same ultra-wide from the iPhone 11 Pro. So why didn't the tech media think that camera was poor quality? That was never a thing.
Also, notice that the three images James Thomson used for the comparison are not actually framed the same way. You can see that the camera on the iMac Pro is turned so that you don't see light coming from the window on the right of the frame. It also looks like the camera is a bit further away and lower than the Studio Display. Obviously, there are going to be some lighting changes as a result of those differences.
The most egregious difference is that he is smiling with better posture in the iMac Pro web cam picture while he is frowning and has poor posture in the ASD web cam pictures. Most people will notice that 1st and most people won't be able to push it aside and look at the picture quality, even when they say that's what they are doing. The ASD image seems to be flattened with no coloring shadows on his face. Maybe that is image processing. It's has to undistort an ultrawide view into a regular view, crop around the face, and do all other sorts of pixel correction, art correction things. Not a lot of pixels left after the crop and undistortion, so not surprised that the 1080p iMac Pro camera is better than a Center Stage camera for him.
And yeah, depending on windows and room lighting, and sunlight of the day, it can change the image. Perhaps the camera processing assumes no one uses a ring light, and it tries to brighten it as much as possible, and that combo results in a flat, no contour face. It's Twitter though, so it's 99% jape 99% of the time, but they also want it both ways, and be taken seriously too. They need to do more work for me to take more seriously.
Another weird comparison was from Macrumors, comparing the UF27 webcam and ASD webcam, and the reviewer said the UF27 was better, but to my eyes, the ASD was better. And it looked like the lighting was different. Bah. Such as it is with camera reviews. At minimum, they need to control lighting and use a calibration poster as one of the test images. Then, there needs to be a test image to look at what the neural engine is doing to the image.
tht said: Hence, it's basically a lot of media noise. The media needs to have a controversy, something that induces stress and engagement. For the Apple Studio display, the webcam is the only point of mediocre-ness, so they are going to play it up as much as possible. The price could have been a big point of criticism, but since the only real comparative product is the LG UF27 with a MSRP $1300, the $1600 price isn't that far off.
As someone said previously, the camera in question is the same ultra-wide from the iPhone 11 Pro. So why didn't the tech media think that camera was poor quality? That was never a thing.
Also, notice that the three images James Thomson used for the comparison are not actually framed the same way. You can see that the camera on the iMac Pro is turned so that you don't see light coming from the window on the right of the frame. It also looks like the camera is a bit further away and lower than the Studio Display. Obviously, there are going to be some lighting changes as a result of those differences.
The most egregious difference is that he is smiling with better posture in the iMac Pro web cam picture while he is frowning and has poor posture in the ASD web cam pictures. Most people will notice that 1st and most people won't be able to push it aside and look at the picture quality, even when they say that's what they are doing. The ASD image seems to be flattened with no coloring shadows on his face. Maybe that is image processing. It's has to undistort an ultrawide view into a regular view, crop around the face, and do all other sorts of pixel correction, art correction things. Not a lot of pixels left after the crop and undistortion, so not surprised that the 1080p iMac Pro camera is better than a Center Stage camera for him.
And yeah, depending on windows and room lighting, and sunlight of the day, it can change the image. Perhaps the camera processing assumes no one uses a ring light, and it tries to brighten it as much as possible, and that combo results in a flat, no contour face. It's Twitter though, so it's 99% jape 99% of the time, but they also want it both ways, and be taken seriously too. They need to do more work for me to take more seriously.
Another weird comparison was from Macrumors, comparing the UF27 webcam and ASD webcam, and the reviewer said the UF27 was better, but to my eyes, the ASD was better. And it looked like the lighting was different. Bah. Such as it is with camera reviews. At minimum, they need to control lighting and use a calibration poster as one of the test images. Then, there needs to be a test image to look at what the neural engine is doing to the image.
The webcam is the least important thing to me here. If it works, then it’s great. I have Zoom meetings with my Audio club every month. Most all of the videos of the over 50 people, and sometimes almost 100, are total crap! Most aren’t coming from Macs, iPads or iPhones, though some are. So worrying about the webcam here is a waste of time. If it looks halfway ok, then it’s better than 90% of the onboard webcams out there.
so e peop,e just love to pick on everything Apple. Bah!
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And yeah, depending on windows and room lighting, and sunlight of the day, it can change the image. Perhaps the camera processing assumes no one uses a ring light, and it tries to brighten it as much as possible, and that combo results in a flat, no contour face. It's Twitter though, so it's 99% jape 99% of the time, but they also want it both ways, and be taken seriously too. They need to do more work for me to take more seriously.
Another weird comparison was from Macrumors, comparing the UF27 webcam and ASD webcam, and the reviewer said the UF27 was better, but to my eyes, the ASD was better. And it looked like the lighting was different. Bah. Such as it is with camera reviews. At minimum, they need to control lighting and use a calibration poster as one of the test images. Then, there needs to be a test image to look at what the neural engine is doing to the image.
so e peop,e just love to pick on everything Apple. Bah!