Continuity Camera is so freaking cool, I wish it fit better into my work
About a week ago, I switched on my Canon R6 and went to record something on video. I have the camera hooked up to an Elgato 4K capture card, which my Mac sees as a webcam. However, in this instance, the Elgato was convinced there was no video coming from the camera. The setup has been going for several years now and has worked perfectly, so something has gone wrong. My suspicion is my mini-HDMI to HDMI cable is misbehaving, and I need to order a new one.
In the meantime, because even Amazon can't deliver in seconds, I started using Continuity Camera. This is the feature that lets you connect to your iPhone and use it as a webcam. It works wired and wirelessly, and I know people swear by it, but I just haven't given it a shot myself because I already had an overkill setup of my own. But when that setup hits a snag, it's nice to have a fallback that should be easy to do.
The great news is that this has worked swimmingly for me, and I've actually used it to record this week's upcoming Comfort Zone episode as well as some other video stuff I needed to do. I used my iPhone 17 Pro and it connected magically and the video itself was very high quality and low latency, even when connected wirelessly. For peace of mind, I have run a long USB-C cable from my Thunderbolt dock to the phone just to make sure I am never surprised by a low battery or dropped wireless connection, but it's been rock solid. Even going for hours at a time, my phone didn't warm up at all, which was a bit of a surprise to me.
The other thing I wasn't expecting at all, but works shockingly great, is that the video is always perfectly level. It's actually kind of crazy. No matter how you're holding the phone, even if it's completely vertical, the video will be perfectly level 16x9 widescreen. This is low key the coolest thing here.
The big downside for me, and anyone who works from home, is that this feature only works between devices signed into the same Apple account. I can use this for YouTube and for Comfort Zone, but I can't use it for work meetings throughout the week because my work Mac is obviously signed into my work Apple account. Every other webcam solution out there works fine in this hybrid setup I have, but not this, and that on its own makes Continuity Camera unfortunately a dud for me.
For what it's worth, I don't think there's an easy solution here, as I don't think any random phone around you should be able to be turned into a webcam in an instant. But I also think it's a great example of why I think "dumb" technology is still super valuable in the modern era. We should have tech that doesn't have a flippin' clue what it's plugged into, it just does a job. Personally, I want this for as many peripherals as possible in my desk setup, and I'm honestly in a pretty good place here. My keyboard, mouse, display, audio interface, speakers, and camera setup all don't care what they're plugged into, they just work. They all have some level of software running on them, but they're so universal that I can almost guarantee that whatever computer I'm using 10 years from now will still work fine with all of these peripherals.
Anyway, if you have a work setup that is aligned with how Continuity Camera works, then I think it's really an awesome solution. Doubly so if you have an old or alternate iPhone laying around that you can use.