lens quality..

[petepete]

Staggered at the improvements that can be made after a bit of an incident with water left me swapping out lens...

A gt680w can be reduced to pathetic both day and night with a g1wh lens fitted and focussed ...

A g1wh can be lifted to absolute top notch and I wouldn't be surprised to see it beat 99% with a gt680w lens fitted...

 

[Hombré]

Its amazing to me how a slight lens adjustment on so many cameras ( accidental or not ) can make such a difference.

 

[jokiin]

So many suppliers cripple their products through very poor lens choice for the sake of trying to make cheaper products

 

[reverend]

Yeah I tried the Mobius B lens on a G90 and had good results here mate:
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/dome-g90-fitted-with-a-mobius-b-wide-lens.7413/

The X2 has a lens like the GT680W in that it's smaller with much less glass frontage than other dashcams - unfortunately the GT880S uses a different lens which suffers terrible focus drift which I never saw with the 680.

Night footage can be hit and miss as the firmware isn't set for the new lens you pair it with but sometimes the sensor does a half decent job of sorting itself out.

 

[petepete]

So many suppliers cripple their products through very poor lens choice for the sake of trying to make cheaper products

agree...

they certainly throttled back the g1wh with its very poor lens ..

Hey reverend..

I think the gt680w has been long passed by and underrated and I ve had footage out of mine day or night that surpasses anything else on the market and had no trouble capturing number plates bar dead of night.

( I always intended to fit a thin microscope slide glass cover over the external mounted lens and use uv glass glue, but never got around to it, and a bit of condensation finally got in )

sounds like the gt880s is a downgrade at a higher price ...

 

[reverend]

Yeah I had high hopes for the GT880S - they've changed something in the software as the video as a different feel to it than the GT680W.

What sort of headlights are you using mate? I really liked the GT680W but the night footage wasn't as good as say the Panorama X2 or SG9665GC using the Sony Exmor sensor - they're cleaner and sharper at night. What I do have problems with are my headlights - they're pretty strong uprated Osram bulbs in the factory unit and they just overpower the car in front at night and so far the X2 handles it the best when it's set to low darkness which I run with all the time now - I've got some GT680W footage archived at home somewhere.

Now it's getting warmer you might start to see one of the problems I had where at night you'd get a large amount of hot pixels at night in the picture when the sensor warmed up? You can see it happening in this one:
https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threa...am-review-a7la30-ov4689-cmos.5992/#post-70976

What I did like was that although the picture in the day could be on the darker side it was always pin sharp in terms of numberplates etc.

 

[petepete]

The lens is on an 8 inch extension external with the camera mounted in the boot and its for the rear...

Its pin sharp like you say but fitted externally it gives outstanding picture quality day or night and on dull days where most cameras fail to pick out numberplates passing at speed it records them 100% and never misses if in range.

I rely on it heavily protecting the rear as I park facing in, lifting numberplates of any vehicle that passes me, and there is an sj4000 to give a wider 170 view fitted in the rear screen which is tinted and gives the same problems everyone else puts up with.... ( handy to lift out and film as the battery stays fully charged giving an hour)


going to stick my neck out here and say the night footage from an externally mounted gt680w outperforms both the cameras you mention and until someone takes the time to post up night footage from a panorama when tweeked in vlc or of a sg9665gc showing there true capabilities--- I have seen no evidence to the contrary.

 

[reverend]

I'm not sure what you want to see mate? Those two definitely produce cleaner night video than the GT680W so when tweaked it will give you better results than you currently get anyway?

You're getting a better base to start off with so any tweaked footage would then give you better results than you get from a tweaked GT680w?

Anything in my back window struggles due to the privacy glass - there is some footage on an X2 in something with a flat back window and it looked mega - I'll try and find it as it's way better than anything I get- but does show that placement makes a huge difference.

 

[petepete]

could do with some panorama x2 or 0806 footage tweaked through VLC to show its true night time capability to make a valid comparison rather than trying to compare what comes straight out the camera that cannot possibly be a valid guide to quality or a basis for comparison.

I see no valid point in saying this camera is better than that on raw footage as its the final tweaked quality and information available from it that is the only valid benchmark for a camera....



seems crazy that a forum that has run this long with so much interest doesn't even have a single comparison thread of tweaked footage or stills to demonstrate this valid benchmark for people to actually make an informed choice.

I would love to see what a £200 x2 is really capable of rather than the dodgy dark raw footage we are left guessing at and my tweaked gt680w beats hands down !

 

[reverend]

You really need two side by side though mate as otherwise tweaked comparison threads aren't showing what the two different cameras can do in the same situation.

I sold my GT680W ages ago but I could try the GT880S as I took it to bits to focus it and I haven't tested it since.

 

[gitup]

You can use other lens, but every lens is different, normally the lens is designed for specified sensor, if use different lens, the video quality and FOV will be different.
Sometimes there is no huge difference between the 4G, 6G, 7G lens, but the price difference will be $3 to $5, so most of dash cams use cheap lens.
I compared more than 20 lens while developing the GIT1, it is very hard to make choice for the lens model, my test result is the lens from big manufacturer perform better.

If you check the mobius, you will know the have changed the C lens which released last year, I think the main problem is high defective percentage, this will cause them always short of lens and out of stock.
A good lens require high technology and QC.

 

[petepete]

You really need two side by side though mate as otherwise tweaked comparison threads aren't showing what the two different cameras can do in the same situation.

I sold my GT680W ages ago but I could try the GT880S as I took it to bits to focus it and I haven't tested it since.

In an ideal world yes...

but I don't see the need to be that picky....

a bit of tweaked footage around town at night gives a pretty good indication if a camera is useless or not ..

 

[reverend]

We'd get some unscrupulous manufacturers then spending ages post processing crap videos to make them look good and polishing turds!!

A lot of folks will never use anything other than what comes out the box but power users like yourself do get the most of the hardware they have. I like dark footage by default as it usually means a faster exposure time so you've got sharper footage:

You do sometimes see extra resolution in night footage on some cameras too - it's hard to see it from pictures and scaled down YouTube clips. I'm looking forward to see what the next wave can do. It's always incremental improvements these days and it's doubtful anything new will come out and be ten times better than anything before it. I'm intrigued to see 4k scaled down footage though at night.

Getting the focus bang on seems to help night footage too.

I'm still loving my new windscreen as that really is like having a new camera!

 

[gitup]

For 4K, if you check the Hero 4 night video, it is also not good. There will be more 4K cameras come out, I heard another chipset will support 4k except the Ambarella.

 

[reverend]

Yeah it's early days for 4k, a year or two down the road hopefully it will be looking better as they get to grips with it all

 

[jokiin]

For 4K, if you check the Hero 4 night video, it is also not good. There will be more 4K cameras come out, I heard another chipset will support 4k except the Ambarella.

GoPro's market is not about trying to read license plates at night, wrong tool for the job

 

[Schnickelfritz]

I'm curious how on earth they manufacture those tiny lens assemblies. At f/2.8 or faster, the lenses seem to have 5- or 6-element lenses. Some are glass. Some are plastic.

Furthermore, a common reported problem among various dashcams and action cams is correct focus. (Most of these types of cameras have fixed-focus lenses.) Don't these factories calibrate the lenses, or is it hit-and-miss?

Has anyone on this forum been to the factories??

 

[jokiin]

the lenses are fixed focus but the focus is set manually and has to be locked into place, it's not like the camera on a mobile phone that is fixed focus and delivered pre set

 

[jokiin]

jump to 10:50 in this video and you can see how this factory does it

it's a sloppy factory so not typical but it is how some do it

 

[Sabe]

I start to wonder one thing about on one minute mark, this girl is tapping her pen to somewhere, did she tap only her table or is there some secret meaning to that tapping, fix non working boards perhaps