ELGATO FACECAM Review – What can my Belly-Cam really do in a practical test? Everyday life vs. marketing

1 - Introduction, Features and Functionality 2 - Real World Test in my Video Studio and Conclusion

Practical use as additional table camera

I use the Elgato Facecam in my video studio as an additional table camera for close-ups of the presented objects like graphic cards parallel to the Sony camera and switchable via Elgato Streamdeck. After a few attempts, this constellation works quite well, but the direct comparison to the broadcast camera obviously has several disadvantages, which are not only due to the price. Let’s call the whole thing flippantly “belly camera”, because in the end it’s nothing else.

The first hurdle the camera has to overcome is the operation with the huge Green Wall. Since I want to be able to switch back and forth between the cameras later without having to make subsequent edits, color matching and setting the brightness as close to the same as possible is incredibly important. The background is not very brightly lit to avoid a green cast on the people and objects in the foreground. But it also creates real and visible problems, especially at the transitions and the edges, when the colors don’t really match in a useful way (see the image in the upper right corner). First of all the original picture in long shot with the Sony camera in the video studio.

And now I will contrast the exposure of the Elgato Facecam with “Automatic” and manual. You can already see in the first comparison that the Facecam is already mercilessly overexposed despite normal illumination with only half of all available spotlights. This is absolutely unusable, but can be corrected quite passably. I wouldn’t even make a big deal about it, the software would notice that I had the camera on manual. Except that it keeps jumping to “Auto Exposure” after every reboot. If you forget to switch this before, the video is completely unusable when you switch to the cam and you start again from the beginning, if you don’t want to edit afterwards. In the stream something like this is completely deadly, so please improve it immediately!

Sensitivity and noise reduction

And what about camera sensitivity in the dark and the noise filter in the dark? Again, I first test the Sony camera with the residual light from the corridor (glass door) and from the control monitor. The headlights, on the other hand, are completely switched off. You can see that even a semi-professional camera reaches its limits here and it starts to produce noise. The Sony’s automatic doesn’t control higher though, which is good because even then it will start to noise:

Now let’s look at how well the Elgato Facecam’s noise reduction acts and how sensitive the so intensely advertised sensor really is.

We also see here that the camera still exposes quite strongly even in very dark scenes, even if the color noise then becomes unbearable. The noise reduction works surprisingly well, but already smears the image extremely.  However, I noticed that you have to completely readjust the cameras for each lighting variant, whereby the Elgato Facecam always acts significantly brighter, but always at the expense of the image quality.

Summary and conclusion

You could of course go on with all the comparisons, but you should also leave the church in the village, because it is not a professional camera. You can’t have it both ways. Unlike usual, this time I’ll start with the criticisms first, because they’re not that extensive, so it’ll go faster. The most annoying thing is the permanent overexposure in automatic mode, the color deviations without manual correction, the constant reactivation of the automatic mode after a restart, the rather short cable with only 2 meters and the price that is a bit too high from my point of view. I think 150 euros would have been enough, because even if the sensor is not bad, it is not premium.

On the other hand, the practical and stable body with lens cover and bottom stand, the good software with update features and all the settings (except for the problem with the automatic mode) are positive points, whereby the standard interface would also provide most of them. This can be tested quite well with OBS, for example. The sensitivity in medium and darker rooms is good to sufficient and better than the webcams tested against it, e.g. the Logitech C920. The noise reduction is really well done and only leaves visible image errors in very dark rooms (see above).

And what am I left with now as a final assessment? If it wasn’t for the rather high price of 200 Euros (you can get a used pocket camera with a much better lens and sensor for that), I would have even given my belly cam a buy tip. As it is, however, the minor annoyances and the price get in the way a bit. But it is defiantly a very good alternative for me on the table in the video studio, because for example a Sony RX100 Mark III from the camera archive would be much too bulky. Better picture, but always disturbingly full in the picture. Then already prefer the solution of Elgato.

On that note, see you on YouTube too. And pay attention to my current videos in the future always nice to the belly cam, because it has now almost always their very exclusive appearance!

Elgato Facecam (10WAA9901)

	Auf Lager, 1-2 Werktage	111,65 €*Stand: 03.05.24 15:27
	Lieferzeit: 1 Werktag	113,00 €*Stand: 03.05.24 15:54
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