How I Fixed My Webcam Lighting for Zoom Calls (2026)

我是如何改善 Zoom 通话中摄像头光线的（2026）

My home office videoconferencing setup is pathetic. For a person who reviews laptops, monitors, webcams, and other home office tech for a living, that shouldn’t be possible. But it is. 我的家庭办公室视频会议设备简直惨不忍睹。作为一个以评测笔记本电脑、显示器、摄像头和其他家庭办公技术为生的人，这本不该发生。但事实就是如此。

The reason is simple: Getting a decent videofeed isn’t as simple as dropping some cash on a new webcam or on a new laptop with a better webcam. Take it from me—someone who is not exactly a professional videographer but spends enough time in video calls that I thought it worth investing in improving my appearance. My mind immediately jumped to the same conclusion I assume everyone has: Buy a new webcam, right? As I learned in my testing, though, it’s not always that straightforward. 原因很简单：想要获得不错的视频画面，并不是花钱买个新摄像头或换台摄像头更好的笔记本电脑那么简单。听我说——我虽然算不上专业的摄像师，但花在视频通话上的时间足够多，以至于我觉得有必要投资改善一下自己的形象。我的第一反应和大家一样：买个新摄像头不就行了吗？然而，正如我在测试中所了解到的，事情并没有那么简单。

Drawn to the Light 追逐光线

I spend most of my time using the built-in webcam on laptops, largely because I’m a laptop reviewer and I’m constantly switching machines. Once upon a time, laptop webcams were completely irrelevant, happy to stay at 720p resolution forever. Things have improved since the rise of remote work, but I’m not about to call the standardization of 1080p a victory. 我大部分时间都在使用笔记本电脑内置的摄像头，主要是因为我是一名笔记本电脑评测员，需要不断更换设备。曾几何时，笔记本电脑的摄像头完全是鸡肋，永远停留在 720p 分辨率。随着远程办公的兴起，情况有所改善，但我绝不会把 1080p 的普及称为一种胜利。

Laptop webcams struggle in low light, have poor image processing, and are then compressed by videoconferencing apps. The best in low-light performance is still the 12-megapixel 1080p camera in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, while the 4K webcam in the Dell XPS 14 has the best sharpness. Both, however, still struggled in my office. The clarity wasn’t there, and the camera was often forced to overexpose light sources to brighten up my face or left me as a ghostly silhouette haunting my weekly meetings. In particular, I’m talking about the two windows in the back of our office. They let in an absolute flood of natural light during the day, backlighting me and throwing my face in shadow. Not great. 笔记本电脑摄像头在弱光环境下表现挣扎，图像处理能力较差，而且还会被视频会议软件压缩。在弱光表现方面，最好的依然是 MacBook Air 和 MacBook Pro 上那颗 1200 万像素的 1080p 摄像头，而戴尔 XPS 14 的 4K 摄像头则拥有最好的清晰度。然而，这两者在我的办公室里表现都很吃力。画面缺乏清晰度，摄像头往往被迫过度曝光光源来提亮我的脸，或者让我变成每周会议中一个幽灵般的剪影。特别是我们办公室后面的两扇窗户，白天会有大量的自然光涌入，形成背光，让我的脸陷入阴影中。这感觉糟透了。

The easiest (and cheapest) thing I could do, of course, would be to move my desk next to the window. All of a sudden, the light isn’t shadowing me, but falling on my face. I recently stayed in a rental house and took a call in a gloriously-lit office nook by a window. I popped open my laptop and saw the true potential in even a low-quality webcam. It’s such a significant difference that simply relocating should be the first order of business. 当然，我能做的最简单（也是最省钱）的事情就是把桌子搬到窗边。突然之间，光线不再让我背光，而是照在我的脸上。最近我住在一家出租屋里，在窗边一个光线充足的办公角落里接了一个电话。我打开笔记本电脑，看到了即使是低质量摄像头也能发挥出的真正潜力。这种差异非常显著，搬动位置应该是首要任务。

Here’s the problem. We have two young kids at home, and we live in the city in a townhouse that isn’t exactly large. With that comes a lot of “shared space”—also known as partially controlled chaos. The room that we have colloquially named the “office” is hardly a dedicated work space. I couldn’t survive without the blur background function in Zoom and Teams. The closet is a storage space, and in addition to our standing desk, which is typically filled with laptops, monitors, laptop stands, and various peripherals I’m testing, we also have some nonwork items throughout the room. Some of those include a play kitchen, bins of toy food, an entire crate of Duplos, a modular play couch, and an assortment of other pokey things that hurt to step on. 问题在于，我们家有两个年幼的孩子，住在城里一栋并不算大的联排别墅里。随之而来的是大量的“共享空间”——也就是部分失控的混乱状态。我们俗称的“办公室”其实根本算不上专门的工作空间。如果没有 Zoom 和 Teams 的背景虚化功能，我简直无法工作。壁橱是储物空间，除了通常堆满笔记本电脑、显示器、支架和各种我正在测试的外设的升降桌外，房间里还有一些非工作用品。其中包括一个儿童玩具厨房、装满玩具食物的箱子、一整箱得宝积木、一个模块化游戏沙发，以及各种踩上去会很疼的零碎杂物。

Moving isn’t an option—at least, not an easy one. I could certainly close the blinds, but that’s also where my 5-year-old displays his Lego creations. And doing so also leaves me exclusively with terrible track lighting on the ceiling—which, again, is behind me. It’s a mixed-use room, and I’m sure some of you can relate to the limitations that creates. 搬家是不可能的——至少没那么容易。我当然可以拉上百叶窗，但那里也是我 5 岁的孩子展示他乐高作品的地方。而且这样做只会让我被迫使用天花板上糟糕的轨道灯——同样，它也在我身后。这是一个多功能房间，我相信你们中的一些人能体会到这种局限性带来的困扰。

I’m back to buying a webcam. After all, an external webcam doesn’t have to stuff all its parts into a tiny camera module that’s squeezed into the top bezel of a screen. Maybe it’s wrong to expect much from these tiny laptop cameras in the first place. I gathered every possible webcam I could find. There are tons of options out there, ranging from cheap 1080p cameras up to spending hundreds of dollars on 4K options with AI features. But I was less concerned with specs like resolution, megapixels, aperture, and field of view, and simply found myself wanting to improve the dismal situation I faced in my office. 我还是回到了买摄像头的老路上。毕竟，外置摄像头不需要把所有部件都塞进挤在屏幕顶部边框里的微小模块中。也许从一开始就不该对这些微小的笔记本电脑摄像头抱有太高期望。我收集了所有能找到的摄像头。市面上有海量的选择，从廉价的 1080p 摄像头到价值数百美元、带有 AI 功能的 4K 选项应有尽有。但我并不太关心分辨率、像素、光圈和视场角等参数，我只是单纯地想改善我在办公室里所面临的糟糕状况。

Lights, Camera, Action 灯光、摄像、开拍

Nearly all of the dozen webcams I tried out looked great while under ideal lighting. I spent some time working in a different room next to a window, and the upgrade to an external camera felt significant. With all that light to work with, the higher-end cameras with a larger 1/1.3-inch image sensor handled the situations beautifully. It didn’t need to blow out the direct natural light to get details in my face, showing a wider dynamic range of shadows and highlights. Having more natural light in the room improved just about every webcam I tried, but they also better showcased just how powerful some of these higher-end cameras really are, such as the Insta360 Link 2C Pro or Obsbot Tiny 3. These are the scenarios most webcams are tested in, leaving them all looking more or less adequate. 我试用的十几款摄像头在理想光线下看起来都很棒。我在另一个靠窗的房间工作了一段时间，升级到外置摄像头的感觉非常明显。在充足的光线下，那些配备更大 1/1.3 英寸图像传感器的高端摄像头处理得非常出色。它不需要为了捕捉我脸部的细节而过度曝光自然光，展现出了更宽的阴影和高光动态范围。房间里更多的自然光改善了我试用的几乎每一款摄像头，同时也更好地展示了像 Insta360 Link 2C Pro 或 Obsbot Tiny 3 这样高端摄像头的强大之处。这些都是大多数摄像头进行测试的场景，这让它们看起来都还算过得去。

But I’ve got the horrendous lighting needed to really put them to the test. So back to my home office I went. As I set up each webcam over my monitor, one after another, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. With the flood of natural light behind me, most of these cameras were forced to rely more heavily on image processing to light up my face—and you can tell. The image gets noisy and blurry, and the light is forced to flatten out. Some, like the Razer Kiyo V2, overexpose the image and wash out the background too much. 但我这里有真正考验它们的糟糕光线。于是我回到了家庭办公室。当我把每一台摄像头依次架在显示器上时，我不禁感到失望。由于身后涌入的自然光，大多数摄像头被迫更多地依赖图像处理来提亮我的脸——这一点显而易见。画面变得噪点多且模糊，光线也变得平淡。有些摄像头，比如雷蛇 Kiyo V2，会过度曝光画面，导致背景显得过于苍白。

My favorite webcam of the bunch, the Insta360 Link 2C Pro, did the best job of not completely blowing out the highlights from the window. It even has a natural background blur, thanks to the large sensor. It was a huge improvement, and yet, it did not transform my poorly lit office into a professional studio. It’s no fun spending $200 on a webcam and… 在这一堆摄像头中，我最喜欢的是 Insta360 Link 2C Pro，它在处理窗户高光方面做得最好，没有完全过曝。得益于大传感器，它甚至能产生自然的背景虚化效果。这是一个巨大的进步，然而，它并没有把我光线昏暗的办公室变成一个专业摄影棚。花 200 美元买个摄像头却……这真不是什么开心的事。