Webcam is probably the last gadget to ever need professional treatment. I mean, it is a god damn webcam. Not an imaging device to capture award-winning cinematic footage. Despite my argument, there exists a group of people who thought otherwise.
They believe that webcam should be and could be professional, and set out to create Opal C1 which the startup proudly proclaims as “the first professional webcam.”
Hmmm, just wondering aloud here for a moment… have the guys, comprising of former Apple, Beats, and Uber employees, stop to think perhaps there’s no need for a pro webcam at all and hence, Opal C1 came to be the first? Just saying… but hey, if you need a pro-grade 4K webcam designed with Mac in mind, there is one, or there will be one soon.
The Opal C1 claims to be the first webcam to rock DSLR technology and having the fastest lens ever on a webcam. This little guy is like the hypercar of the webcam world and like a hypercar, it is aesthetically pleasing as well.
Under the hood, the 7.8 mm, 4K Sony sensor, which promised brightest brights, darker blacks, and more than 5x the resolution of a typical webcam, further benefits from an f1.8, six-element, glass lens that significantly boosts low-light performance by letting in 2.4x more light than other webcams.
But what is visual performance without good audio, right? And audio excellence for your audience is enabled by a technology known as MicMesh. Here’s what this close-up audio tech is about:
“The Opal C1 comes with MicMesh™, an array of beamforming microphones that find and focus on the sound of your voice. And with intelligent noise cancellation, every ding, drop and dog bark is filtered out to get an audio experience that clearly speaks for itself.”
The Opal C1 is not merely a webcam. It is essentially a computer itself. Enabling fast and smooth output of audio and video output is the fastest neural processing chip, the Opal Trillium microchip, on a webcam that offers 4 trillion operations per second and Intel’s new 14 nm VPU chip.
Moreover, it is app-enabled too, allowing you to tweak the output image, including brightness, contrast, and white balance. Seriously, is this still a webcam anymore? It really is a professional webcam that you probably never knew you need.
It is not clear when exactly Opal C1 Professional Webcam will start shipping, but we heard limited beta units are up for grab as pre-orders. The asking price is a grand US$300 a pop.
Images: Opal.
via 9TO5Mac.
