How To Use Your Canon Camera as a Webcam for Live Streaming on macOS Last Updated 02 February 2022 by Michael Forrest

There is more than one way to connect a Canon camera to your Mac as a webcam. Today we’ll talk about how to connect a Canon EOS 5D Mark iii but a similar process will work for other models.

1. Get the webcam driver

Canon provides webcam drivers for macOS and Windows through their website.

Download the Driver

Follow the instructions to install this. You may need to restart your computer.

You can then connect your camera with a USB cable.

You can verify that the driver is available by firing up a Google Meet (slides below).

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2. Prevent Your Camera From Turning Itself Off

Disable power off as per this video:

This will prevent it from turning off after 2 minutes or whatever.

3. Don’t Be Beholden to a Battery

You can get a power adapter so you don’t have to worry about batteries. https://www.digi-quick.co.uk/canon-eos-mark-iii-ac-power-adapter

I would recommend getting an official Canon adapter as third-party adapters will result in an extra message when you start up your camera saying “can’t communicate with battery” that can be annoying when you have your camera’s screen facing away from you and the message can get swallowed if you’ve already connected to the computer.

4. If It Still Turns Off After Half an Hour.

Canon DSLRs like this will automatically turn off after half an hour. This is for the fun purpose of preventing DSLRs being taxed at a higher rate as video recorders.1

But there is a solution.

You can install Magic Lantern which will give you an option to make the camera automatically turn itself back on.

You’ll need the “nightly build” (not “experimental build”).

“the nightly builds can now be considered somewhat stable”

Look for your camera model and you’ll be taken to a page like this explaining how to install on your specific camera.

Download Magic Lantern