Webcam

News and information about webcams, or video cameras that stream photos and videos in real time, typically across the Internet. There are standalone webcams and built-in ones, and photographers can also convert certain still photography cameras into high-quality webcams as well. Webcams are particularly useful for online video conferencing, especially as remote work as become ubiquitous in the world.

Artist Finds the Exact Moments Photos Were Shot Using Public Webcams

Publicly accessible live webcams can be found all over the world these days, especially at famous tourist locations. Photographer and artist Carlos Pacheco realized that this means anyone can find the exact moment any photo was shot there given a time stamp. That's the premise behind his new project, titled Found.

Webcam Captures Volcano Explosion and Shockwave in a Time-Lapse Video

Located the Mexican state of Puebla, Popocatépetl is the second highest peak in Mexico and an active volcano -- a really active volcano. It's one of the most lively ones in the country of Mexico, with over 15 major eruptions on record since 1519 and plenty of smaller explosions through the years.

Yesterday, Popocatépetl experienced another powerful explosion as the top "popped off" to relieve the pressure within. A webcam pointed at the peak was able to capture the whole thing, and the video above shows what the explosion and resulting shockwave look like in time-lapse.

Simultaneous Photographs of and from a Mountain, Shot During a Sunrise

There is no shortage of landscape photographs of mountains at sunrise on the Internet, but how often do you get to see photographs captured at the same time from the mountain's perspective? Photographer Todd Caudle ('Cloudman' on 500px) was able to capture these two viewpoints simultaneously yesterday morning by shooting with both his personal camera and a live webcam located at the mountain's summit.

The First Webcam Was Invented to Check Coffee Levels Without Getting Up

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness is definitely its father. Case in point, here's an interesting tidbit of imaging history: the first webcam ever was actually invented by lazy students at Cambridge University who didn't want to waste a trip to the nearby coffee pot if it was going to be empty when they got there.

The Flea3 Webcam: The World’s Smallest 4K Camera

You may think that shooting 4K video is reserved for people with deep pockets and cinematographic aspirations, but a new camera from Point Grey begs to differ. The company's new Flea3 webcam seeks to offer that same super-high resolution in a tiny package and for a significantly smaller (though still not small) price tag than, say, a RED Epic.

Use Your Webcam as Scanner Camera

Texas A&M graduate student Roman Kogan has written an interesting program that turns your webcam into scanner camera.

This program turns your webcam into a scanner camera, similar to the ones used to record photo finishes, but much, much, much slower. With it, you can create images like the ones on this page with ease and with no digital manipulation! It works by taking one pixel line at a time and arranging those slices in a line to produce the image. Thus one dimension of the image is spacial, and the other is temporal.

3D Webcam Capture Demo at 60 FPS

Kyle McDonald is a programmer working on building open source utilities for realtime 3D scanning using structured light, a technique that requires only a projector and a cheap camera.