My setup went through a lot of iterations over the lockdowns trying to build a high-quality setup in a small inner-city apartment; I'm almost happy now, but it's been quite a journey that I expected to be much easier and a lot less of a rabbit hole, but oh well at least I learned a ton. Also, why are webcams that bad? Given what low-tier phones can do with their back cameras, it's really weird just how freakishly bad webcam image quality still is on a lot of models.

As for some of my learnings:

Cameras: Using an external camera is important, looking downward into a laptop camera isn't very flattering to begin with, and it makes me uncomfortable. As with an ill-fitting suit, it makes me less confident. So I tried using my Fujifilm X-T4 with a HDMI capture device, since I already had that; a Logitech StreamCam, a Logitech C920 (or C922, not sure), a Razer Kiyo Pro and several cheap 720p webcams. The X-T4 wins in the image quality department (unsurprisingly) hands-down, but you have to run the audio through it as well or use a super low-latency capture device or else the image may lag just a small-but-perceivable bit and make the result feel pretty uncanny-valley-ish. It's a big hassle to set up before every meeting and leaving it on a free-standing tripod is an expensive accident waiting to happen. Would not recommend unless you must have the very best quality you can get (and have compatible microphones and good lights).

I've found the Logitech Streamcam to be pretty solid in terms of image quality. Don't count on Logitech's software if you're on a Mac, because part of the functionality is outright missing or broken, another part is availably only through a virtual webcam the software creates that won't work with most apps, and the whole thing will eat CPU like crazy, I've uninstalled it pretty quickly. Instead I use Webcam Settings [1], which can set the most basic parameters (exposure, focus, pan/tilt/digital zoom, backlight comp, anti-flicker, white balance) directly on the camera, which works a lot better. I digitally zoom it on my head a bit as it's quite wide, and that doesn't seem to hurt the image quality meaningfully as far as Slack/Zoom/Teams calls are concerned (might be different if you stream to Youtube at full res, but I never do). All StreamCams I received mid-2020 had focus issues, but these can be fixed relatively easily by cracking them open and changing the pre-set focus manually (voiding the warranty of course), and they seem to have fixed their QC since anyway, so getting one of these should be a pretty safe bet.

The Razer Kiyo Pro is great as well, with a very nice image, but it's even wider, and last I checked there was no macOS software at all. It still works well on macOS, though, you just can't use anything that requires Razer software, but it's compatible with Webcam Settings, so I'm fine. Using it on the living room TV nowadays for calls with friends and family and it works really well in that function as it's really wide-angle, so I could imagine it would work well for small meeting rooms. It's pretty big (too big for my desk setup, actually) and the microphone isn't great (you definitely need an external one no matter what), but its image quality is really great, considering it's a webcam. Very good low-light performance as well, great colors, looks more like an actual digital camera than a generic webcam.

I didn't like the Logitech C92x I tried at all. Grainy, bad low light performance (not that important as I have lighting, but still), slow to react to lighting changes, ugly, washed-out colors even when lit properly, I sent that one back right away. It was from Amazon so it might have been a fake, and there seem to be several models that are near-identical but differ greatly in image quality, so your mileage may vary.

Next, lights. People are having quite a lot of success with ring lights, but I have my desk against a wall with shelves, so placing a ring lights at the proper distance doesn't work well, and I find they're eyesores. I currently use approx. six meters of Hue-compatible LED strips with warm/light diodes in addition to RGB hidden behind the monitor and shelves, at a press of a Hue switch all come alight and give me a lot of pretty clean, bright indirect light bounced of the wall, and it's essentially invisible unless turned on. Still working on synchronizing the light color and intensity with the outside light coming in through the window, but being Hue-compatible makes that pretty straightforward in theory.

People keep preaching that lights and microphone are the most important things to get right, and I guess it's true. Turning on those LED strips is like a 600% image quality boost even in a relatively well-lit room using a decent camera. If I were to re-do this with a free-standing desk, I'd probably look into using softboxes.

Finally, microphones. Especially when part of a grid of participants in a call, the part of you that gets to make the biggest impact is your voice. It's also a pretty visceral kind of impact; I think there was a piece on that on HN a few months, back, essentially describing how being hard to understand makes people viscerally like you less, so as with lights, nailing this goes a long way. I use an Elgato Wave 3 on a short horizontal arm at around face-height that I can rotate off to the side; since it has a built-in pop filter, it's a pretty compact package and it's fine to have it dangle around at head-height, and since it has a kidney characteristic, I can angle the part with the least sensitivity towards the keyboard to really reduces typing noise by a lot. Before the Wave 3, I used the much less expensive Behringer C1U as well, and while you might want a pop filter with it, it's just fine as well, no gripes with it. Almost any half-decent microphone is going to be a big improvement over webcam microphones, let alone bluetooth headsets, just make sure you decouple it from your desk (there are lots of inexpensive stands and arms that will do this).

If you need to get up and draw things on a whiteboard or the like, I find the Røde Wireless Go and the corresponding lavalier microphone work like a charm, but it picks up mechanical keyboards very well. For my Macbook, I had to add a USB sound interface (a cheap one worked fine) and one of these USB isolator thingies to get rid of a persistent whine when keeping the receiver plugged into USB-C for power. I tried cheaper chinese transmitters that had their max gain so low it was borderline unusable, but I find the Røde Wireless Go (I) to be very solid. Good range and battery life, too.

I'm still working on getting the background right. I can't rely on background removal functionality as I sometimes have to use software that doesn't have this, and there seem to be no standalone solutions that don't hog half the CPU. I've played around with OBS a bit, but it introduces a perceivable delay that I feel makes it a bit harder to take part in fast-paced discussions, so nowadays I try to avoid it. I can't place my desk so my actual background is nice, so I currently use a simple molton fabric backdrop on a rod of bamboo that can be attached magnetically to two little magnets dangling from the ceiling and can be set up and taken down really quickly, rolled up and stashed away out of sight. It works quite well, but it's an opaque white – some structure in there might be nice. As I said, still a work in progress.

Apart from this, I'm quite happy with my current setup, and I've received unsoliticed positive feedback as well, so I seem to have done a thing or two well enough. Not sure if the result is actually worth all the effort I've spent (probably not), but it's been a (more or less) fun rabbit hole/lockdown project.

1: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/webcam-settings/id533696630?mt...