I really appreciate this answer, but it is not satisfying. By my knowledge, the subnet mask configured on one host does not have to match the subnet mask configured on the other host for them to communicate. If my computer is configured for 169.254.1.x/24 (where "x" is not 222 to avoid conflict with the camera IP), the fact is, the camera's IP address of 169.254.1.222 will fall into that network and the computer will send packets to the camera (instead of the default gateway, of which there is not one because I'm using a switch and no router). Similarly, if the camera is configured to 169.254.1.222/16, the IP I configured for my computer will fall into that network regardless of my choice of "x" (again with the exception of 222 due to IP conflicts) and the subnet mask on my computer is completely irrelevant to that. There must be something else going on here.
As added context, if I configure my computer to 169.254.1.10/16 as the link you gave suggests, I can connect to the camera (using depthai-ros) but something is very wrong (not sure where) such that I'm not able to see any images coming from the ROS topics. Just changing the last number of the computer's static IP from 10 to 1 makes images come through.
