Using a real camera as a “webcam”

My cameras are great, but they’re older (Nikon D5100, Sony a6000), so I can’t use the newly released (Engadget re Nikon); solutions (Nikon; Sony (Mac)) to turn them into webcams. But I can set them up with “clean HDMI” (Sony) (with the Nikon, hack it a bit to, e.g., disable the “live video” time-out and enable “clean HDMI” output^*), and then capture the stream with a USB device, like the ikan HomeStream. The system requirements for the HDMI dongles are somewhat hefty (there are some that have onboard hardware encoding); in the case of the ikan, it’s: CPU:PC i5-3400 or above; NB i7-3537U 2.0GHZ or above; 

Graphics card: PC NVIDIA GT630 or above; NC NVIDIA GT735M or above; RAM:  4G RAM.

(Here’s hoping my 2015 MacBook Pro (2.2 GHz Core i7 (I7-4770HQ), 16GB, “Intel Iris Pro” GPU) will run it capably. Edit: Per David Serrano at ikan, “It’s compatible.”)

Gotchas I’ve stumbled across so far:

• The Nikon D5100 has a “mini C” HDMI port (adapter).
• To get output on the HDMI port, go into Menu ⇢ Wrench (Setup Menu) ⇢ HDMI ⇢ Device control: OFF.
  
• The Sony a6000 has a “micro D” HDMI port (adapter).
• The Sony should be set to Movie mode to get the best output out of the HDMI port.

Lighting options I’m considering (why is it so hard to find an inexpensive ring light with a camera-compatible tripod mount, vs. a cellphone holder?):

• DSLR lens mounted ring light
• DigiPower Streamer ($60)
• DigiPower Insta-Fame ($20) (This is the one I went with, for now. The lowest illumination setting is still pretty damned bright. Different light “temperatures” is handled via pieces of translucent clip-on plastic. So far so good.)
  

Ring lights vs. rectangle. (tl;dr: Ring is better, but clumsy and not very portable; the rectangle light works fine for business, use, for make-up tutorials or vlogging, ring).

ikan HS-VCD

Okay, so, I purchased an ikan HomeStream (HS-VCD), after reading about it in a couple of spots. It sells for $79 most places. (I found one on eBay for $65 with free shipping. I’m cheap.)

Searching for the USB Product ID (0x2109) and Vendor ID (0x534d), I learn the internals are the same as a widely available cheap generic USB Video input device, all over eBay for $15 or so. So, there you go, I just saved you the same $65 I spent.

It arrived at the office and I don’t have any HDMI source at my fingertips to test it with, but I had to see what would happen if I hooked it up to my Core i5-3570K 3.4 GHz, Intel HD 4000 graphics machine. It seems to work, as much as you’d expect without a signal (actually, more; the NTSB color bars are a nice touch - if those are coming from the dongle, vs. Zoom?):

Pieces are coming together! I might, in November of 2020, finally join the videoconference revolution we’ve all been thrust into by the pandemic...

 Edit: I couldn’t resist trying it out on an old MacBook Air (I thought it was a “mid-2013” but apparently it’s a “mid-2012,” based on the CPU) I had at home. Although the CPU (an Ivy Bridge Intel Core i5-3427U @ 1.80GHz) is technically below (or right on the edge of) the specs ikan says this thing will work at (Core i5-3400 @ 2.0 GHz or better), it seemed to function just fine, though I wasn’t exactly stress testing it.

^* It took me a minute to figure out how to determine the firmware hack “took,“ especially the Live View time-out. Menu button ⇢ Pencil (Custom Settings) ⇢ Timers/AE Lock ⇢ Auto off timers ⇢ Custom ⇢ Live view. This will say 3 minutes on the summary screen, but if you select it and go in to change it, the top value will be the maximum (6 hours).