Camo Studio is the Best App for Using an iPhone as a Webcam on Windows

How good is the iPhone as a webcam?

In the early days of at-home learning and endless Zoom meetings, I invested in a Logitech C920 webcam. It was affordable and often cited by many bloggers as being an exceptional camera. Up until now, I found it perfectly serviceable, it fits snugly on my monitor, the microphones are good enough, and it was 1080p.

But how does my iPhone 11 Pro stack up against the C920? Let’s take a look.

Not only is the color so much more vibrant on the iPhone, but the focus is also completely soft on the Logitech!

To be fair, I have done little to prepare for the on-camera appearance, the track lighting in my basement is hardly flattering for portrait photography, however, I wanted to test the software in a realistic way and not use professional lighting.

That was until I discovered that Camo Studio has control of the rear camera flash to use as a fill light! Since most webcams that feature a built-in ring light cost a pretty penny extra, this was a pleasant discovery.

Recently added to Camo is a new filters gallery that features .cube LUT support. Meaning, if you are a photographer and have custom color profiles already configured with your cameras, you can apply them here. Or, you can use creative LUTs and employ a more dramatic look. Conveniently, there is a blend slider for combining a custom LUT against the original image to a more subtle degree. Very nice!

Using Camo for conference calls

Camo Studio interfaces with Windows just like any other hardware webcam, which means it can be used with any video conferencing app.

I used Camo for a slew of Zoom Meetings events planned today and, there were no hiccups moving over to this new application. Simply select Camo as a source within the Video settings panel within Zoom meetings. The output of the Camo Studio application gets sent into Zoom and there was no noticeable latency.

One thing I did notice was the quality of the virtual backgrounds. If I used the background replacement tool within Camo Studio, there was more noise cropping up around my shoulders vs what I was seeing in Zoom. So, I decided not to use the background replacement tool in Camo and instead, used the Zoom setting. There weren’t any problems mixing and matching the best settings between apps, since Zoom treated Camo as if it were a regular webcam.

If I have a Mac, can’t Continuity Camera do this?

New with the release of macOS Ventura, Apple natively supports using an iPhone as a webcam for this very application. There are even exclusive features like desk view, which have no equivalent in Camo Studio. However, there are some notable drawbacks with Continuity Camera that Camo solves, which includes:

· Both Windows and macOS compatible

· iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Android compatible

· No need to use the same Apple ID on all devices to connect

· Works with web cameras, DSLRs, and just about anything and everything else

· Photo editing style image adjustment controls

Conclusion

Camo Studio is a great utility with many practical uses (and maybe a few gimmicks too). While Continuity Camera or OBS might offer some of the same functionality for free, Camo offers a professional and straightforward user interface that adds overall convenience and stability. With a free, 720p limited version of Camo Studio available, there really is no risk at all to checking out this awesome app.