Elgato Cam Link 4K Capture Card for DSLR, Camcorder, Action Cam

I went down this rabbit hole a few months back when I was looking to buy a webcam for a new gaming PC that I had built. Also reached the same conclusion as the author (i.e. all webcams are shit).

I ended up using a mirrorless camera that I bought in 2015 and hooked it up to my PC via mini-HDMI + this USB capture device (https://www.amazon.com/Elgato-Cam-Link-Broadcast-Camcorder/d...).

The video quality is incredible and set up is fairly simple. It also works with the Macbook Pro I use for my job, which is great since the webcam on that is also garbage.

For the case of some older Nikon models, like my D7000, it is not possible to get "Clean HDMI" from the stock firmware, but there are options to patch the firmware[1][2] to get this. I use this with an HDMI to USB dongle[5], a wired battery pack[4], the aforementioned D7000 and any of the lenses I already owned. I've found that 35mm is a bit too tight given the length of my desk where the camera is mounted[3], but 20mm-24mm is about what works well for me at the moment.

The biggest problem with my setup is that when I open OBS I need to disconnect and reconnect the dongle before OBS will pick it up. Until I figured out how to repeatably get that working it was... more trouble than it was worth. I need OBS because the version of the patched firmware I'm running produces a non standard aspect ratio that I adjust for in OBS, at the cost of a more involved setup and extra CPU utilization. If I used the patched firmware that removes the fixes that (I haven't tried it yet), I would likely forego OBS for meetings.

[1]: https://nikonhacker.com/wiki/Supported_Models

[2]: https://nikonhacker.com/wiki/Nikon_Patch

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B094N6W6SP

[4]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071L8R4NC

[5]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K3FN5MR