 In this video, we look at the three different ways you can connect a Nikon DSLR camera as a webcam. I will go through the pros and cons of each method and which method might work best for you based on your camera model. If you have a Canon camera, the same should apply. So let's get started. During this pandemic period where everyone seems to be communicating online using Zoom or Microsoft Teams, having a good camera can make you stand out from the crowd. If you have a DSLR at home, why not use it as a webcam? This is a view from a normal webcam, a Logitech C310. However, when I change the view to my Nikon DSLR camera, you can see the image looks lot better. And because it's a DSLR, we can change the lens to get a wider view or a narrow view and have different depth of field, for example, a blurry background. The first method we should try is the webcam utility from Nikon. The link to the utility is in the video description. It's available for both Windows and Mac and it was released very recently in November 2020. Click on the download page and check the system requirements. As we can see, it only supports some of the newer models from Nikon. My Nikon D800, for example, is not in this list. If you have one of these models, you can proceed and download and install the utility. Once you have installed the software, go to your meeting application. For example, in Zoom, you can go to settings. First choose the video settings and in the camera, when you click on the drop down, you should see a new choice called Nikon webcam utility. Click on it and your Nikon camera now appears as a webcam for Zoom. If we go back to the system requirements and check the resolution, we can see that the utility supports 1024 by 768 resolution. This is not exactly the standard resolution that we are used to, which is HD or full HD. And that is the reason we see this black bars on the side. If I remove this checkbox in Zoom, which says original ratio, then Zoom will try to stretch the video so it fills up the entire screen and this is what you should do. Here is a quick recap of the webcam utility. First of all, from a cost perspective, it's completely free. You don't need anything except downloading the software and the USB cable that came along with your camera. The video quality, as I showed you, it's not exactly full HD resolution. For ease of use, all you need to do is install the driver and you are done. For camera controls such as aperture, ISO, all this must be set up before you connect the camera to the USB cable. There are no extra features provided by the webcam utility and it supports very limited camera models, specifically the newer cameras and it cannot be used as a training aid. What do I mean by training it? You will see it when I look at method number three. The next method is to use a HDMI capture card, something like this. Inside the box, you will find a device which has a HDMI connector on one side and a USB on the other side. You will need an appropriate HDMI cable that connects your camera to this card and then plug it into the computer and that will appear as a USB camera for the computer and for your online meeting application. You can get different capture cards ranging from $20 all the way to $100 depending on what is the quality of the card. This particular card can capture up to 1080p, which is good enough for me and that's what you are seeing in front of you, but you also get capture cards that can capture in 4K and if your camera supports 4K output, then you will get the maximum possible output using this method. The only requirement is that your camera should support clean HDMI. If you want to know whether your camera supports clean HDMI, check it up on Google. For example, if my camera model is D3100 and I want to check whether it has clean HDMI output, I can see that this camera model does not have clean HDMI, which means I won't be able to use the capture card option for this camera. And here is the feature comparison of the capture card. First, when it comes to the cost, you will have to buy a capture card and an appropriate HDMI cable that matches your camera. This provides the highest video quality possible based on your camera model and the capture card that you have purchased. Ease of use, it requires multiple cables to be connected to your computer. As for camera control, it's the same as the Nikon webcam utility. You have to set up everything before you connect the cable into the computer. There are no extra features and the models that are supported are those that have clean HDMI. The third method is to use a software called SparcoCam. It's available for both Nikon and Canon. This method provides the most flexibility, but it is not free. You can use the free version and it works exactly as the paid version, except a watermark is placed on top of your video, which could be distracting to the audience. To download the software, go to the SparcoCam website. The link is in the video description. Click on the download button and please note, unlike the webcam utility, the SparcoCam software is available only for Windows. Download the software and install it on your PC. Once you install the software, you will get an interface like this. There are plenty of things we can do with the software. I'll highlight just a few. The first thing we can do is we can change the resolution of our video and we can go right up to Full HD, which is 1920 by 1080. If you want a lower resolution, we can go to 720p or any of the other resolutions supported by the software. Depending on the resolution that you choose, it will change the height and width of your video. The next cool thing you can do with the software is to play with the picture in picture feature. And to do that, you can click on this button, which says add picture in picture. You can move the window around, resize it if you want, and then decide what goes inside this window. For example, if you have a second camera and you want to show that content in that window, you can, for example, click on webcam and it will show us the second camera in the picture in picture. You can add effects to your video. For example, if you want to add a text, click on effects, then text overlay, click on the text overlay button and type your text. Let me type tech photosmasters, which is my channel name. You can move it around, resize it to format the text, click on the formatting button and you can change the parameters of this text. If you want to make it bold, italic, you can change the font, the size of the font, etc. You can also enable scrolling for the text by clicking on scroll and choose the direction right to left, for example, and the text will start scrolling, increase the speed and there you have it. You can overlay images, for example, click on image overlay and choose any of the image available for you. Similarly, you can move the image around, resize it and you can get really creative by what appears in your camera view for the audience in an online meeting. Once you have set up your SparkoCam software, you can go to your online meeting application such as zoom, click on the video and one of the option that should be now available for us is called the SparkoCam video. And whatever we had set up in SparkoCam, the images, the scrolling text, the picture in picture will now be visible in zoom. And here is a summary of SparkoCam features. First, when it comes to cost, you have to pay $70 for the standard license. Or if you only want it for a specific camera, only Nikon, then you pay $50. Of course, you can use it free, but with a very big watermark, which is not recommended. Video quality very good up to 1080p is of use. All you need to do is install the software like the Nikon webcam utility. As for camera control, you get to control all the parameters of the camera in the software. Once with additional features like picture in picture, images, animations, text. Camera support is the highest among all the three methods because it supports even the older cameras. And what I really like about this software is that I can use it as a training aid. Whenever I'm giving a training course on photography, I can show the parameters of the camera on the screen. Participants will see in real time what happens whenever I change the aperture, whenever I change the focus, it will be reflected on the screen. So those are the three methods that you can use to convert your DSLR camera into a webcam. I hope you found this video useful and I wish you all the best.