Best Wifi Camera

[captainronohio]

What is the best wifi camera to use? I have a Nikon 3300 but its slow showing the live mode and then I have to use another device to print. I'm looking for a cheap solution. Or would it be better to use a phone as the camera instead of the Ipad? I just was thinking a camera looks better when people are coming up to the booth. ( like hes using a cell phone for the pics geeezz)

[tim]

Welcome!

If you already have a good iPhone, and you do not need to sync with strobe/flash (ie. you are using constant lighting, like LED panels), then i'd seriously consider using an iPhone as the remote camera. You get green-screen for free (no green background actually required) if it has a dual camera, you can run the internet thru it (by connecting to its personal hotspot), and the end-to-end connection is something controlled by Wifibooth (you are not at the whim of Sony or Canon suddenly changing everything in a firmware update that you/me have no control over).

If you try it out and you really don't like it, i'd look at either Canon (80D line if you're using strobe/flash) or Panasonic as they have the best wifi (they support connecting to external cameras so you don't have to have another device for internet access).

[captainronohio]

Ok. So what does the green screen provide for me then? What can I do with it ? Any documentation with it ?

[tim]

Documentation here: https://wifibooth.com/help/articles/remotedevicecamera/

Pasting from that link:

Green Screen effect (replaces the background with a different background). Note that this is only supported on dual-camera devices at least as new as the iPhone 8 Plus, ie. iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max. To activate this feature, hit the “Select…” button to choose a new background image. Note: the green-screen effect will only be applied when a person’s face is detected in the frame, and the lighting is good

The idea behind green-screen in photobooths is to replace the background with an image of your choosing. For example, put all of your guests "on the beach" ...

[captainronohio]

Gotcha. I will play around with it. Thx

On another note. Can you zoom in and out by pinching the screen while taking the picking or using the camera ?

[tim]

Not yet: since that's digital zoom which loses quality rapidly, the expectation is that you'd just move the camera closer to the subject if you want to zoom in. Is there a reason why that doesn't work for you?

[captainronohio]

We are doing a Christmas thing where we need just the kids faces at a certain size. We can just adjust them I guess

[tim]

You can definitely zoom photos before you print! Kids have a tougher time standing in the middle in any case - you’ll want the leeway I assume...

[aluminumwelder]

why doesn't green screen work with the dual iPhone 7 plus camera?

[tim]

Actually, I am no longer 100% sure that it will not work with iPhone 7 Plus. I'll try to find one next week to test.

The issue is that in iOS 12.0, there was a rotation bug that caused photos in certain configurations of the camera pipeline to have all depth-data (and other metadata too) stripped away. This of course causes the exact same effect as if the phone did not support the new depth capability (namely, the portrait matte) available in iOS 12. But now that 12.1 is available and I believe Apple fixed this, I should retest: because I may have made the mistake of hitting that bug without realizing it, and believing that meant the iPhone 7+ isn't capable of the portraitMatte. However there's a good reason the iP7+ might not support it: it takes a fair amount of neural-net processing power to generate, and the iP8+ has a lot more of that power than the iP7+.

Edit, update: looks like I manually excluded the iP7+ in code. So it'll have to be me who finds one and tests it.

Edit 2: ah, you actually have an iP7+ ! OK i'll get rid of the exclusion in the beta for the next build and you can tell me if it works

[tim]

Nevermind. Just heard back from Apple Staff, it is NOT supported on iP7+: https://forums.developer.apple.com/mess ... 447#342447 (requires developer login)

[aluminumwelder]

OK, MAYBE I will buy a cracked iPhone 8 just to test. if you have any full resolution sample photos you can share of how well the green screen is cut out that would be great. Any subject is fine, except kittens, lol.

[tim]

Sure, I just posted a sample here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=527&p=4660#p4660
(For others) it must be a dual-camera iPhone to achieve this, and iPhone 7+ won't work. iPhone 8+, X, or XS currently