In the age of remote working, Opal offers a glimpse into the future of webcams – TechCrunch

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In September, Alexis Ohanian sent out a test ball, disguised as a tweet. “We have quietly supported a team (from Apple, Beats, Uber) to revive a forgotten corner of consumer technology,” wrote the founder of 776. “The beta is here today and the quality is mind-blowing. Webcams, welcome to 2021 “.

The message was accompanied by an open box, with some identifying details, including the company name, pixelated. This information, in the end, wasn’t too difficult to obtain, with the company and product name – Opal C1 – printed in white on the border just above the lens.

The reaction was swift. The “shut up and take my money” gifs flowed. After all, it was a nice device, supported by at least a known quantity. And more urgently, it has come to the height of a technological sore spot that has been virtually universally recognized. Webcams, in a word, suck.

Image credits: Brian Heater

It is not a kind of revelation. It’s not like they just started sucking. It’s just that, until recently, it was just something we could live with. But the 50th time you peek into some CNN correspondent’s apartment at 480p through a hand from Crisco, you begin to question the nature of the world.

Of course, you don’t have to appear on cable news every night to request an update. Maybe you bought a Logitech or maybe your work was spent on the jury of a DSLR. Both cases expose what is ultimately a huge and poorly targeted market. And while at the start of the pandemic it may have felt like a momentary blip, even if / when this whole thing is over, it’s clear there really won’t be a normalcy to go back to.

As much as the corporate offices have dragged their feet, it seems that we have moved on to the issue of remote working. It quickly became more of a rule than an exception, leaving many to ask the same question: where’s the iPhone of the webcams? It sounds simple enough. Take all the lessons of smartphone imaging and apply them to a stagnant market.

LR: 2020 iMac webcam, Opal C1. Image credits: Brian Heater

It doesn’t appear to come from Apple. Not in the short term, at least. To the credit of the company, they have made some strides, first by processing digital images on its M1 chips and then by actually updating the built-in sensors. But for many, better is not enough. This was pretty much the thinking that pushed the founders of Opal along their path.

When Ohanian’s tweet arrived, Opal had been working on the C1 for seven months. It pretty much happened overnight in the world of hardware startups, but at least they had nice hardware packed in nice packaging, with an air of VC mystery sprinkled inside. The company says it now runs a waiting list of 16,000 people.

“[The response] it was overwhelming, “says co-founder and president Stefan Sohlstrom.” It was really rewarding for us to see it. We are the two most bullish people about what we are building. Of course we felt that not only was the market big, this goes without saying, but the need was very deep. It was not just that, sure, millions of people would buy it. It was for the people who are doing this for their work, this is important to them. This is how they communicate with the world. “.

Image credits: Brian Heater

Opal’s journey officially began in November 2020, with one simple question.

“If we were to build a webcam today, what are the technologies at our disposal that make an iPhone as close as possible to a DSLR?” says co-founder and CEO Veeraj Chugh. “We did a lot of research by talking to people in the industry, talking to users, and talking to people who have previously worked at competitors. The overwhelming answer, ‘this should exist and the technology has to look very, very different from any webcam that has come before.’ “

In December, the team collected an undisclosed seed round and a month later began building a team of designers and engineers who had previously worked for companies like Apple, Google and Magic Leap.

The result is $ 300 carefully crafted hardware with a Sony 4K 7.8mm sensor and integrated beamforming microphone mesh array. It is without a doubt the most beautiful webcam I have tested. I recognize that – in and of itself – it doesn’t say much, but I spend many hours every day staring at one, so it might as well be nice to watch.

Image credits: Brian Heater

He may even end up being the most capable. But this is where I shelter my bets and tell you that my hands-on time with the product has actually put me in beta testing. Opal is aiming for an out-of-the-box plug and play experience, and for a company that only recently celebrated its first anniversary, it’s well underway.

As we get closer to some sort of general availability, I will feel more comfortable reviewing the product. For now, I’m content to give the C1 a longer leash than it does for product review. It’s an exciting new device from an exciting new company. It has problems and broken promises, pretty much what you’d expect from a limited beta from a brand new company.

The device sitting above the screen of my iMac M1 is the final hardware. The software, on the other hand, is still very much in beta. What I have received is starting to be distributed to select customers, starting today. For opal:

The units will begin shipping to the public on December 14th. Waitlist customers can purchase the camera with an invitation. We are slowly taking steps to ensure that the customer experience exceeds expectations – once a positive threshold is crossed, we will come out in tens of thousands.

Image credits: Brian Heater

4K is not up and running yet. “We temporarily disabled 4K video, as it is not compatible with most video conferencing apps and was putting users in trouble,” notes the company. “We are relaunching shortly with stronger notice and will be available for applications that support, for video recording and the like.”

When opening the beta control software on the desktop, the Sound tab is disabled. Using the microphone array on the front and ambient microphones on the back, the company has some great things planned along the way:

We are focusing on building the leading markets in noise cancellation and using the same knowledge to build something we call Studio Sound. Studio audio lets you sound like you’re on a professional podcast, without the $ 500 boom microphone. Using the MicMesh inputs piped through a neural network, we’ll be able to make your sound professional.

The sound, as it is, is good. And by “good,” I mean business meetings well, not going to CNN or recording my podcast well. If you do any of these things, you’ll want to stick with that devoted microphone. In the future, who knows? “Studio Sound” could be standard or perhaps something that pros can unlock as part of a monthly service pack. There are still many questions to be answered during these heady beta days.

Another question the company needs to answer is how much control to give the user upfront. I realize this seems like a no-brainer, but in the world of imaging, too much control can quickly make average users lose their minds. The ideal compromise for most users is good quality out of the box, with additional manual user adjustments if you dig deeper. Automatic white balance and skin tones are both future challenges for the business.

Image credits: Brian Heater

But overall, I’m happy with the image I pulled out of the box. I’ve done a few tweaks here and there. Having ring light and natural lighting from the windows helps, although I still find myself messing around with settings to get things where I want.

The camera uses an artificial bokeh effect, similar to the portrait mode found on most modern smartphones (although the company claims to have developed its own, in-house). However, at the moment I only have the cursor about an eighth of the way down. When it’s too intense, it tends to cloud my ears and the sides of my face, due to the fact that there are no depth cameras on board. Opal claims to have experimented with a stereo depth camera, but decided not to use it to get the device in a timely fashion.

“I think at the end of the day, when you talk to users, they think, ‘Give me anything. I can’t take care of these Logitechs anymore, ‘”says Chugh. “So for us, speed was of the utmost importance, because we felt we could ship something really good. We just have to be a little ruthless about priorities. “

For the C1, that also means no optical zoom. Sounds like an odd complaint, perhaps, for a webcam, but it’s something I’ve grown fond of, while using a desktop DSLR setup. Being able to tightly crop a shot without degrading image quality is enormous.

Image credits: Brian Heater

“For the first camera, the more mechanical components you add, the more risk you have on the supply chain side and on the production side,” says Sohlstrom. “In practice it is more to break. Canon had perhaps 50 years to fine-tune their lenses. It is definitely something we could do in the future ”.

For now, the system is capable of 2x 1080p zoom without image degradation, thanks to the 4K sensor. The company says it could theoretically do something like 20-30x, but image quality will suffer as a result. I used my phone call with the founders, in part, to give a little constructive feedback. First, I’d like a direct zoom setting. For now, the closest thing is Facelock. It’s similar functionality to something like Apple’s Center Stage and similar functionality on smart displays from companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

It’s honestly too sensitive, however, and it might leave you a little seasick. Hopefully, in future editions, the company will allow users to adjust the sensitivity or just zoom in. These are both pretty straightforward solutions. There are such bigger problems. I found apps like Google Hangouts and Zoom and had to turn the camera off and on a few times and / or restart the software. The camera also gets very hot, even when it is not active. The company blames both the system’s built-in processing and the 4K image downscaling. He is working on corrections to the above.

Image credits: Brian Heater

For a product that a brand new company started building less than a year ago, these seem like relatively minor complaints. I will avoid telling people to drop ship from their DSLRs, particularly if video quality is important to their work. But there are so many promises here. The C1 is an extremely thoughtful product, from touches like a magnetic lens cap with a microfiber cloth and coiled USB-C cable to more intricate workings.

This definitely looks like the future of webcams, even if it still has a way to get there.

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