Mobius with a go pro lens. Could this be better than the C lens?

[country_hick]

Apparently This is possible. I had not considered the possibility of installing the wrong lens on the mobius cmos sensor. Is this worth trying or are there some problems you will encounter if you do try this?

The following paragraph is from the video description.

Even after refocusing quality isn't great, so i was looking for alternatives. Narrow (lens A) is out of scope, too narrow. I used several lens in total:
- gopro1 (~8$) - cheap and still very good quality, glass optics
- "original" lens B - probably impossible to get good focus in image - corners will be blurry anyway. Everything else is not bad
- "fake lens b" from aliexpress. IMO much much better than stock "B" lens. Too bad, cost (~15$) and availability (only on aliexpress with insane shipping speeds) makes this poor choice
- gopro3 lens (now widely available, ~15$ shipped, look for 150 degree gopro lens ) - all glass, light, plastic protector. IMO best choice today

Several videos showing different lenses are below.

 

[map]

It looks like the first and third clips are the same.

The lens flare reduction seemed quite good on the GP3 lens, however the GP3 fov looks quite narrow for a 150° lens.

 

[country_hick]

When copying that many links it is easy to repeat one. I removed the accidentally duplicated video.

With all I have read on this site I do not recall seeing this potential solution being mentioned. I am not saying this is a good or a bad idea. I am hoping others with a lot more experience can do that. I only mentioned this up as a potential improvement worth looking into. I do not have enough experience to contrast one lens FOV with another in a meaningful way.

I brought this up because i am considering buying a mobius. If I get one I am pretty sure I want the wider FOV lens. Buying direct from China I can buy one mobius and a C lens module for $18 more than buying the mobius with the C lens installed. That is cheap enough for 2 lenses and a spare CMOS in case of electronic failure. However, if a go pro lens threads on and is even better than a mobius lens maybe that would be better to buy. I wish I could see the raw video for the videos above. That would give better details.

 

[map]

I think you will be happy with a Mobius, I doubt you will find a dash camera in its price range with comparable quality and such a knowledgable support community.

Check out this thread https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/idea-for-zoom.8514/
@Dashmellow has posted some great info which might be of interest.

 

[russ331]

I've followed the Mobius threads at RCGroups since 2013. Alternative lenses are a regular topic of discussion.

The most credible experiments have been conducted by Janke. The consensus of opinion at RCGroups is that the standard Mobius lenses cannot be bettered for overall performance ... unless you spend more on the lens than the current price of the whole camera.

The Developer clearly went to some trouble to source the best affordable lenses that are available.

If you have a spare lens handy, then fair enough to try it out. If not, don't waste your money.

On the subject of money, I recommend that you buy from a Mobius-approved local seller. Buying from China is the cheapest option, buying locally costs extra but brings more peace of mind, & the muscle of your consumer protection laws.

 

[jokiin]

Thread should be titled Mobiius with alternate lenses, just because some seller calls them GoPro lenses, they are not GoPro lenses, that's just who they're trying to market them to

 

[Isoprop]

When copying that many links it is easy to repeat one. I removed the accidentally duplicated video.

With all I have read on this site I do not recall seeing this potential solution being mentioned. I am not saying this is a good or a bad idea. I am hoping others with a lot more experience can do that. I only mentioned this up as a potential improvement worth looking into. I do not have enough experience to contrast one lens FOV with another in a meaningful way.

I brought this up because i am considering buying a mobius. If I get one I am pretty sure I want the wider FOV lens. Buying direct from China I can buy one mobius and a C lens module for $18 more than buying the mobius with the C lens installed. That is cheap enough for 2 lenses and a spare CMOS in case of electronic failure. However, if a go pro lens threads on and is even better than a mobius lens maybe that would be better to buy. I wish I could see the raw video for the videos above. That would give better details.

A guy called Janke at RC-Groups has tested many, many different lenses but I don't believe he's found a lens that has better quality than the Mobius. The developer is also always testing different lenses and only uses the best quality he can find. The lenses used on the Mobius are of exceptional quality and can't be compared to cheap (plastic) lenses made in China.
In short, you almost certainly won't be able to find a lens of better quality but you will definitely find many lenses with different angles of view. Keep in mind that any lens you buy will need to have an IR filter installed and you'll most likely need to adjust the color settings to compensate for the different lens characteristics. I can't recommend using lenses not supported/designed for the Mobius unless you have a lot of time to experiment and tweak the settings. Otherwise you'll be disappointed.
If you need more information you might want to consider contacting Janke who has an awful lot of knowledge with using different lenses on the Mobius.
[Edit] I spent too long typing, so russ331 beat me to it [/Edit]

 

[country_hick]

I want to thank everyone who replied.

I am still very new to this. I have not found an exclusive section on RC just for the mobius although I did find the support thread there. The terminology used in the videos shown above was apparently imperfect and I used it in the thread title. I assumed (oops) since he said go pro and the sellers links said go pro that the lenses would naturally be go pro lenses. The only way to sort through information on the internet is to try to verify or disprove information that may not be correct. I posted this thread hoping to find that the other lenses were actually better than the mobius lens but also kind of expecting they would not be better. Sadly the internet is filled with information and a lot of that is wrong.

I have read several times that mobius uses very good quality lenses. I was hoping perhaps even better lenses could be found. Even if better lenses were found I recognize the firmware might not be able to work correctly with them. I was unaware that extensive lens testing had been done on this cam by Janke. It looks like the real mobius lens choices are the ones to stick with.

 

[Isoprop]

I want to thank everyone who replied.

I am still very new to this. I have not found an exclusive section on RC just for the mobius although I did find the support thread there. The terminology used in the videos shown above was apparently imperfect and I used it in the thread title. I assumed (oops) since he said go pro and the sellers links said go pro that the lenses would naturally be go pro lenses. The only way to sort through information on the internet is to try to verify or disprove information that may not be correct. I posted this thread hoping to find that the other lenses were actually better than the mobius lens but also kind of expecting they would not be better. Sadly the internet is filled with information and a lot of that is wrong.

I have read several times that mobius uses very good quality lenses. I was hoping perhaps even better lenses could be found. Even if better lenses were found I recognize the firmware might not be able to work correctly with them. I was unaware that extensive lens testing had been done on this cam by Janke. It looks like the real mobius lens choices are the ones to stick with.

You can trust the Mobius developer. He is very, very meticulous when quality is concerned but obviously can't consider lenses costing, say, $100 and more. It took many months of testing before the developer decided the quality of the 'C' lens was suitable for the Mobius. This was not a hurried job.