MOST OP WEBCAM! _ Epiphan LUMiO 12x PTZ Camera Review

A Review of the Epan Video Lumio 12x PTZ Camera: A Geek's Perspective

I was excited to get my hands on the Epan Video Lumio 12x PTZ camera, hoping it would meet all my expectations. As a webcam and camcorder enthusiast, I had high hopes for this camera's capabilities. However, my experience with it was mixed, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.

Firstly, I should mention that the camera is indeed designed for use in classrooms, offices, or meetings where multiple people are involved. It has a wide 72.5-degree field of view, which would be ideal for such settings. However, this made it unsuitable for my intended use case, which was to have one-on-one conversations like we're having now. I had to settle for using it in situations where the camera's field of view was not necessary.

One of my biggest disappointments with the camera was its autofocus capabilities. The automatic focus feature seemed to struggle with focusing on my face, even with manual adjustments. This was frustrating, as I wanted to use the camera's features to enhance our conversation. The zoom function did come in handy, however – 12x optical zoom is impressive, and it allowed me to get a closer look at myself without having to physically move.

Another issue I encountered was the lack of a microphone unit on the camera itself. There was no audio input whatsoever, which made it difficult for me to sync up my secondary microphone with the audio. This limitation would be more pronounced in situations where external microphones were used, as I have been doing in other video production setups.

I did find some aspects of the camera to be user-friendly, such as the remote control that allowed me to change settings easily and the on-screen display for navigating the camera's various options. The camera also came with four presets that could be set up for different positions and settings, which was convenient.

The quality of the camera itself was excellent, especially in well-lit conditions. It recorded over SDI, resulting in a high-quality signal without significant compression. I was able to use it seamlessly with both my Avi-SDI and Epan Pearl streaming boxes, as well as OBS for live streaming.

One minor nitpick I have is that the camera's remote control could be more intuitive. While it's easy to understand most of its functions, some features feel a bit buried beneath other options.

In conclusion, while the Eplan Video Lumio 12x PTZ camera had some impressive features and was relatively easy to use, it fell short in certain areas for my specific needs. If you have a use case where this camera's field of view is necessary, you might find it an excellent choice. However, for my intended purposes, I would need a more versatile and user-friendly option.

A Note on the Camera's Design

I should mention that the camera itself was easy to set up and came with all the necessary batteries. The design seemed sturdy enough for its intended use case – perhaps for security or surveillance applications in large rooms or offices.

The camera is designed to be placed in a corner, where it can zoom in on specific areas of interest. While this feature would come in handy in certain situations, I couldn't see myself using it regularly.

A Special Shout-out to Our Patrons

I'd like to take a moment to thank our recent Patreon subscribers. Without your support, these videos wouldn't be possible, and I'm truly grateful for your help.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI don't get a lot of opportunity to review cameras on the channel which really sucks because I love reviewing them I love learning them playing around with them and taking videos and pictures with them so I was really excited when my buddies over at epan video offered to send me over a loner unit of their new 12x lumio PTZ which stands for pan tilt Zoom by the way I had to look that up very carefully basically like a conferencing business meeting classroom Style St webcam and it's really really cool and it's 60fps let's take a look so this is the camera itself and like I said there it is a loner unit so mine's actually missing one of the feet on the bottom this was one that they have passing around but it is a really cool camera now quick talk about specs it has 12 times optical zoom complete pan tilt rotate flip upside down functionality it can even be mounted upside down and flipped and mounted that way it can record up to 1080p 60 frames per second over SDI and goes down to 1080i 720p60 1080p30 720p 30 blah blah blah blah blah full HD full 60fps if you like it and it records via SDI which was also my first experience with SDI so what I used to test the recording was they also sent me over a beat up unit of their Avio SDI which is like the Avio HD that I reviewed before and their upcoming or probably already out Avio 4K that I'll be reviewing as well but the 4K accepts an HDMI input the HD accepts a DVI input I needed something for SDI so they sent me their Avi SDI so I use this and their epiphan Pearl streaming box which I've reviewed before to record as well this is a really freaking fantastic camera on the whole but for what I was hoping to use it for while I had my hands on it cuz I do have to send it back I was fairly I ended up being disappointed with a specific nitpicky couple things so you can see on the front this is where the main lens unit is and where the optical Zoom action happens and it's got quite the amount of glass here for the actual lens unit which is really great it is true optical zoom you don't lose any quality from it it's like working with a DSLR almost the bottom features the rubber feet like I said one is missing it's got some manual switches for controlling some of the technical side of things that I'm not going to mess with and then it has a tripod screw mount to mount it up on a tripod or other mounting systems on the front it has an indicator LED and the infrared U it has a remote control here I guess I should mention that full functional remote control to fully control the camera with that's the receiver for that is on the front here and then over on the back you have some rs232 funky or another inputs that I'm not going to mess with a cvbs oxil Jack the HD SDI connection which is what I'm worried about a DVI output and the DC power input again I'm just using the SDI video out to my epan Pearl and then for the Avio SD as well now initially I set it up and I was very impressed I could already tell that the video was quite silky smooth the 60fps was there and it looks fairly nice even in lower light conditions I was going to set it up as a completely Overkill cuz this thing is like 1,300 bucks uh even though Logitech has a similar option and it's a few hundred bucks cheaper I'm not sure what the differences are uh but they look very similar but I was going to use it as the world's most Overkill webcam but this SDI cable is really really short and all and all of my a Tob USB 3.0 cables for the Avio SDI are fairly short as well and I just couldn't Bridge the distance from the spot behind my monitor where I needed to mount it to be my face cam for videos and such and run it straight to my computer for a full USB 3.0 connection so what I ended up doing was replacing my main camcorder setup which I which I had going here I've since switch back to my T3i but here on my main tripod for my video studio and using this bad boy as my aam Now functionality wise it was the best decision I could have made but if you noticed in the what the fact videos and a couple other uh Tech Tuesdays and such they were all pretty much out of focus so you get a whole realm of options to control the camera via the remote when you pull up the onscreen display menu with the remote so what's really cool is that it actually shows it well cool and not cool depending on who you are it actually shows it on the camera output which was convenient for me because I had a video preview here on a monitor running you know from my epan Pearl and I could see it and generally on an input switcher or whatever you'd be able to see it but if you don't want that's showing then that might that might be bad for you but it has a full onscreen display where you can customize pretty much everything from even like the shutter speed ISO and aperture just like a full DSLR setup you could set up the frame rates and the resolution you could set up the bit rate that it was outputting over SDI and then you could set up whether it was autofocus or manual focus focus and then you can control the zoom and the manual focus from this remote with the plus and minus buttons then you could also set up some presets as to where the camera is focused and where it's angled and stuff basically everything that you have going at the time set as a preset I did not utilize this at first because it seemed I I got it to where it was looking okay and I thought it would save those settings just automatically for the next time I turned it back on it whenever I turned it back on it did turn to the right point but all of the brightness settings and stuff were completely jacked up and what I found very frustrating is the settings themselves were still set at the same point so for for example if you leave it in auto mode it adjusts the shutter speed the aperture and the iso to match your lighting conditions to produce what it considers to be the best possible image I set it up with a shutter speed of 120 since I was doing 60 FPS and then adjusted the aperture and ISO and the SDI gain which is something I don't have a whole lot of experience with to make the best possible image but then when I turn it off and back on the the image looked like it did before I set those settings up but the settings were still exactly the same so then in order to fix it I had to completely like jack up the settings and screw them all up and it was just a very inconsistent experience however if I used presets that may have been a bit better but it didn't make a whole lot of sense why on one boot to the camera plus 16 gain which is what it was at by default was exactly what I needed and then in other instances it was way too much like it was a little weird but my issue with the focusing is it you can focus in and out and I was able to get a full you know Focus too close in front of it made it too blurry Focus too far behind me got too blurry but I wasn't able to focus on my face even autofocus wasn't really able to focus on my face it was able to focus on my shelf back here and I completely like reorganized my studio space here to sit as close to the camera as I could so it could separate me from my backdrop and it was clear that if I moved my face it was adjusting autofocus for my face but it wasn't ever to like able to lock focus on it and it's like this exact distance of about like 3 to 4 feet from the camera being a main subject it just wasn't having any of because again it's not meant to be a webcam or a camcorder it's meant to be for like classrooms or offices or meetings where it has a lot of people and you're looking to get the full wide I believe it's 72.5 degree field of view instead of getting a oneon-one kind of encounter like this but that was really disappointing for what I wanted to use it for because I was like this will be the best best webcam face cam ever 60fps got my camcorder over top unboxing the Galore and then it refused to focus on my face and even with manual focus I just I got a couple stops like in front of me here and then back behind me could never get it right on my face it was very very obnoxious another nitpick that I had real quick here is that there is no microphone unit on this camera at all there's no audio input whatsoever which is really frustrating cuz I'm fairly certain SDI can transport audio but there's none here now again for a conf camera where you'd have another microphone and so on it's not necessary as the main source of audio but for example when I was using it with a dual camera and external microphone setup with my epan Pearl I was hoping to be able to you know I I need I need an audio source of some sort in order to sync up my secondary microphone with the audio because in Adobe Premiere I can just link them up it'll automatically detect the two audio tracks line them up and give me the better quality one of my external microphone but when there's no audio Source coming in at all from the camera camera I can't do that and that was fairly disappointing and I I really wish just some sort of basic microphone would have been thrown on here not don't play it up and Market it as being like this great technology of noise reduction you won't hear any Echo at all or anything just say basic audio or basic mic for scrap audio good to go but again this is for my uses not necessarily for what it's intended for just wanted to throw it out there but overall it's very easy to use if you have the couple little minor tweaks and issues with it aside the remote is super handy to change all the settings it's a very easy to understand onscreen display for the most part it just takes a couple AAA batteries and then you do have four presets that you can set up for where it points and what the settings are and the like and of course you can set it up with up to four of these cameras so if you have them placed around a room you can control them individually with the same remote by just pressing the cam 1 through four buttons the quality is fantastic especially if you have good lighting conditions and adjust the settings accordingly and it's recorded over STI so you get a very very not so compressed signal which is awesome and it was easy to use with both the Avi SDI that is hard to say Avi o SDI with OBS or with the epan Pearl streaming box which is what I've been sort of using on my camera set as well great camera very expensive it's going to be for specific circumstances but I really wanted to take a look at it regardless so I could geek out with it and for a 60fps 1080p camera like this does a great job and that 12 time zoom is just amazing like I I'm really impressed you could zoom in all the way like onto my mustache and while it would have trouble grabbing focus on that it still shows you can like if you're trying to set it up in a big classroom or business building you could set it up kind of like a security camera although that'd be a lot of data going through but you can set it all the way up in a corner and zoom in on a specific like desk or something and be totally fine it is really nice this has been my fairly lengthy review of me geeking out about the AV or no not the Avio the epan video uh lumio 12x PTZ camera if I could keep it I would find a place to set it up and it would work and it would be amazing but I can't keep it got to send it back thank you to epan for sending it out they are not sponsoring the video they are simply giving me review products as always I will have reviews of their other captured dongles coming up as well in the future and if you like the video smash the like button get subscribe for more awesome Tech videos leave me a comment down below if you have any thoughts if you have a an example use for this cont ref ing camera and otherwise I will catch you in the next video I also want to take a moment to give a huge thanks and shout out to our recent patreon subscribers without you guys these videos would not be possible and I thoroughly appreciate your help visitI don't get a lot of opportunity to review cameras on the channel which really sucks because I love reviewing them I love learning them playing around with them and taking videos and pictures with them so I was really excited when my buddies over at epan video offered to send me over a loner unit of their new 12x lumio PTZ which stands for pan tilt Zoom by the way I had to look that up very carefully basically like a conferencing business meeting classroom Style St webcam and it's really really cool and it's 60fps let's take a look so this is the camera itself and like I said there it is a loner unit so mine's actually missing one of the feet on the bottom this was one that they have passing around but it is a really cool camera now quick talk about specs it has 12 times optical zoom complete pan tilt rotate flip upside down functionality it can even be mounted upside down and flipped and mounted that way it can record up to 1080p 60 frames per second over SDI and goes down to 1080i 720p60 1080p30 720p 30 blah blah blah blah blah full HD full 60fps if you like it and it records via SDI which was also my first experience with SDI so what I used to test the recording was they also sent me over a beat up unit of their Avio SDI which is like the Avio HD that I reviewed before and their upcoming or probably already out Avio 4K that I'll be reviewing as well but the 4K accepts an HDMI input the HD accepts a DVI input I needed something for SDI so they sent me their Avi SDI so I use this and their epiphan Pearl streaming box which I've reviewed before to record as well this is a really freaking fantastic camera on the whole but for what I was hoping to use it for while I had my hands on it cuz I do have to send it back I was fairly I ended up being disappointed with a specific nitpicky couple things so you can see on the front this is where the main lens unit is and where the optical Zoom action happens and it's got quite the amount of glass here for the actual lens unit which is really great it is true optical zoom you don't lose any quality from it it's like working with a DSLR almost the bottom features the rubber feet like I said one is missing it's got some manual switches for controlling some of the technical side of things that I'm not going to mess with and then it has a tripod screw mount to mount it up on a tripod or other mounting systems on the front it has an indicator LED and the infrared U it has a remote control here I guess I should mention that full functional remote control to fully control the camera with that's the receiver for that is on the front here and then over on the back you have some rs232 funky or another inputs that I'm not going to mess with a cvbs oxil Jack the HD SDI connection which is what I'm worried about a DVI output and the DC power input again I'm just using the SDI video out to my epan Pearl and then for the Avio SD as well now initially I set it up and I was very impressed I could already tell that the video was quite silky smooth the 60fps was there and it looks fairly nice even in lower light conditions I was going to set it up as a completely Overkill cuz this thing is like 1,300 bucks uh even though Logitech has a similar option and it's a few hundred bucks cheaper I'm not sure what the differences are uh but they look very similar but I was going to use it as the world's most Overkill webcam but this SDI cable is really really short and all and all of my a Tob USB 3.0 cables for the Avio SDI are fairly short as well and I just couldn't Bridge the distance from the spot behind my monitor where I needed to mount it to be my face cam for videos and such and run it straight to my computer for a full USB 3.0 connection so what I ended up doing was replacing my main camcorder setup which I which I had going here I've since switch back to my T3i but here on my main tripod for my video studio and using this bad boy as my aam Now functionality wise it was the best decision I could have made but if you noticed in the what the fact videos and a couple other uh Tech Tuesdays and such they were all pretty much out of focus so you get a whole realm of options to control the camera via the remote when you pull up the onscreen display menu with the remote so what's really cool is that it actually shows it well cool and not cool depending on who you are it actually shows it on the camera output which was convenient for me because I had a video preview here on a monitor running you know from my epan Pearl and I could see it and generally on an input switcher or whatever you'd be able to see it but if you don't want that's showing then that might that might be bad for you but it has a full onscreen display where you can customize pretty much everything from even like the shutter speed ISO and aperture just like a full DSLR setup you could set up the frame rates and the resolution you could set up the bit rate that it was outputting over SDI and then you could set up whether it was autofocus or manual focus focus and then you can control the zoom and the manual focus from this remote with the plus and minus buttons then you could also set up some presets as to where the camera is focused and where it's angled and stuff basically everything that you have going at the time set as a preset I did not utilize this at first because it seemed I I got it to where it was looking okay and I thought it would save those settings just automatically for the next time I turned it back on it whenever I turned it back on it did turn to the right point but all of the brightness settings and stuff were completely jacked up and what I found very frustrating is the settings themselves were still set at the same point so for for example if you leave it in auto mode it adjusts the shutter speed the aperture and the iso to match your lighting conditions to produce what it considers to be the best possible image I set it up with a shutter speed of 120 since I was doing 60 FPS and then adjusted the aperture and ISO and the SDI gain which is something I don't have a whole lot of experience with to make the best possible image but then when I turn it off and back on the the image looked like it did before I set those settings up but the settings were still exactly the same so then in order to fix it I had to completely like jack up the settings and screw them all up and it was just a very inconsistent experience however if I used presets that may have been a bit better but it didn't make a whole lot of sense why on one boot to the camera plus 16 gain which is what it was at by default was exactly what I needed and then in other instances it was way too much like it was a little weird but my issue with the focusing is it you can focus in and out and I was able to get a full you know Focus too close in front of it made it too blurry Focus too far behind me got too blurry but I wasn't able to focus on my face even autofocus wasn't really able to focus on my face it was able to focus on my shelf back here and I completely like reorganized my studio space here to sit as close to the camera as I could so it could separate me from my backdrop and it was clear that if I moved my face it was adjusting autofocus for my face but it wasn't ever to like able to lock focus on it and it's like this exact distance of about like 3 to 4 feet from the camera being a main subject it just wasn't having any of because again it's not meant to be a webcam or a camcorder it's meant to be for like classrooms or offices or meetings where it has a lot of people and you're looking to get the full wide I believe it's 72.5 degree field of view instead of getting a oneon-one kind of encounter like this but that was really disappointing for what I wanted to use it for because I was like this will be the best best webcam face cam ever 60fps got my camcorder over top unboxing the Galore and then it refused to focus on my face and even with manual focus I just I got a couple stops like in front of me here and then back behind me could never get it right on my face it was very very obnoxious another nitpick that I had real quick here is that there is no microphone unit on this camera at all there's no audio input whatsoever which is really frustrating cuz I'm fairly certain SDI can transport audio but there's none here now again for a conf camera where you'd have another microphone and so on it's not necessary as the main source of audio but for example when I was using it with a dual camera and external microphone setup with my epan Pearl I was hoping to be able to you know I I need I need an audio source of some sort in order to sync up my secondary microphone with the audio because in Adobe Premiere I can just link them up it'll automatically detect the two audio tracks line them up and give me the better quality one of my external microphone but when there's no audio Source coming in at all from the camera camera I can't do that and that was fairly disappointing and I I really wish just some sort of basic microphone would have been thrown on here not don't play it up and Market it as being like this great technology of noise reduction you won't hear any Echo at all or anything just say basic audio or basic mic for scrap audio good to go but again this is for my uses not necessarily for what it's intended for just wanted to throw it out there but overall it's very easy to use if you have the couple little minor tweaks and issues with it aside the remote is super handy to change all the settings it's a very easy to understand onscreen display for the most part it just takes a couple AAA batteries and then you do have four presets that you can set up for where it points and what the settings are and the like and of course you can set it up with up to four of these cameras so if you have them placed around a room you can control them individually with the same remote by just pressing the cam 1 through four buttons the quality is fantastic especially if you have good lighting conditions and adjust the settings accordingly and it's recorded over STI so you get a very very not so compressed signal which is awesome and it was easy to use with both the Avi SDI that is hard to say Avi o SDI with OBS or with the epan Pearl streaming box which is what I've been sort of using on my camera set as well great camera very expensive it's going to be for specific circumstances but I really wanted to take a look at it regardless so I could geek out with it and for a 60fps 1080p camera like this does a great job and that 12 time zoom is just amazing like I I'm really impressed you could zoom in all the way like onto my mustache and while it would have trouble grabbing focus on that it still shows you can like if you're trying to set it up in a big classroom or business building you could set it up kind of like a security camera although that'd be a lot of data going through but you can set it all the way up in a corner and zoom in on a specific like desk or something and be totally fine it is really nice this has been my fairly lengthy review of me geeking out about the AV or no not the Avio the epan video uh lumio 12x PTZ camera if I could keep it I would find a place to set it up and it would work and it would be amazing but I can't keep it got to send it back thank you to epan for sending it out they are not sponsoring the video they are simply giving me review products as always I will have reviews of their other captured dongles coming up as well in the future and if you like the video smash the like button get subscribe for more awesome Tech videos leave me a comment down below if you have any thoughts if you have a an example use for this cont ref ing camera and otherwise I will catch you in the next video I also want to take a moment to give a huge thanks and shout out to our recent patreon subscribers without you guys these videos would not be possible and I thoroughly appreciate your help visit\n"