Narrow FOV wanted

[Gilbertd]

Having failed so far to get a recommendation, I'm widening my search a bit in the hope that I can find something that suits what I need.

I need a narrow FOV, not 170 degrees, not 130 degrees but something around the 70-90 degree mark.

Integrated screen (so that rules out the Mobius with the A lens which I haven't been able to find anyone selling anyway) preferably 2 inch or greater.

Decent quality video day and night and resolution of 1080p or greater.

RELIABLE! Something that doesn't crash, lock up or freeze, something that just works.

Nice to have but not essential are GPS with speed display and motion detection.

Rather than going through all of the 2,781 different ones that Amazon UK list to see if they even quote a FOV (and it seems that the only ones that do are the ones with the very wide view as they seem to feel this is a selling point), can anyone point me towards something that meets my spec. Originally I was looking for something around the £60-70 mark but that seems to have gone out of the window, so ideally under £100.

 

[jokiin]

if it wasn't for wanting a screen you could just buy the Mobius and put a narrower lens on it

 

[Nigel]

This comes with a 90 degree lens and also a narrow FOV option which will give a slightly narrower FOV, and if you turn on the gyro stabiliser it should be around 70 degrees. (depending on how you measure your degrees - horizontally/diagonally)

http://www.gitup.com/en/gitup-actio...king-with-f28-435mm-16m-hfov-72-13g-lens.html


RRP on that is above your budget though, I think to stay within your price range you will need to change the lens on something cheaper.

 

[russ331]

Mobius A has a 75° Horizontal Field of View when 'Narrow Mode' is selected.

You may want a screen, but you don't need one. It's in stock at Webbex ...

http://www.minidvcameras.co.uk/product/mobius-action-camera-v3-1080p-mini-dvr/

 

[Gilbertd]

Neither the Gitup or Mobius have a screen and Webbex seems to be the only place that will sell the Mobius with the A lens. I may not need a screen but I want to be able to review footage immediately without having to take the camera or memory card out of the car and download it. I actually found one that quoted the lens as having an 80 degree FOV but I've looked at so many different ones on eBay and Amazon I've no idea which one it was. I'd prefer something half decent, or at least from a known manufacturer rather than a Chinese made clone of something else. That's why I was hoping someone on here would know of one.

 

[Nigel]

Neither the Gitup or Mobius have a screen...

The Gitup has a choice of playback methods, you can use the LCD display on the back of the camera, you can use the AV composite output to display it on the car's video player, you can use the HDMI output, you can access the recorded files via wifi, you can use it as a USB memory card reader to access the files and play them on a tablet/phone... that's all I can think of currently.

I'd prefer something half decent, or at least from a known manufacturer rather than a Chinese made clone of something else. That's why I was hoping someone on here would know of one.

If they were clones then we would be able to recommend some alternatives, such as the cameras they were cloned from!

Out of interest, why do you want a narrower FOV than everyone else?

 

[russ331]

... I want to be able to review footage immediately without having to take the camera or memory card out of the car and download it.

I review footage from my Mobius, Mini 0805 & SGZC12RC cams in-car on a weekly basis. Despite two of the cams having inbuilt screens, I prefer to remove the cards & review their contents on my Android phone using MX Player Pro.

 

[Gilbertd]

Out of interest, why do you want a narrower FOV than everyone else?

I'm not sure everyone else wants a wider FOV, that's just what most manufacturers are promoting as a good thing. A narrower FOV gives an image more like what you actually see instead of stretching the perspective making things look much further away than they really are. That means you'll get more detail at the sort of distances you are likely to be interested in.

Taken from my previous thread, "With a 135 degree FOV, the width of the image 50 feet away is going to be roughly 173 feet. If the recording is made at 1080p, so 1080 pixels wide, that means that each pixel covers around 2 inches. Considering that a standard UK number plate is 20 inches wide, that means the entire number plate will be only 10 pixels wide by 2 pixels high. You aren't going to be able to read the 7 digit number from that.
However, with a 60 degree FOV, the width of the image at 50 feet is going to be around 57 feet wide. So the same number plate will be 31 pixels wide by 6 pixels high where you will get a chance of reading it."

50 feet away is likely to be the furthest distance you are interested in. Anything further away from you than that isn't important. Think about it, if someone cuts in in front of you leaving you only a couple of feet, you want an image that shows how close he was and not one that makes it look like he gave you plenty of room which is what you will get with a wider FOV.

I hadn't noticed that the Gitup had a screen, the ad doesn't even show a picture of the back of it, but it's expensive and I can't find a listing of it with the narrow lens anywhere in the UK.

This search has come about because I have been using an £18 eBay special clone of a GS8000 (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151940688407) which can be digitally zoomed. 2x zoom gives something closer to what the eye sees but as the video quality is pretty poor in the first place, by the time it's thrown away the outer pixels and is only using the centre of the image, although the perspective looks more natural, there's no detail. It's also possibly the most unreliable piece of electronics I have ever owned. I replaced it with a Mini 0826 and, after replacing the memory card for a Transend, it is reliable but the screen is so small as to be a waste of space (I suppose the Mini in the name should have given me a clue but I expected it to be much bigger than it actually is) and the wide FOV makes the images pretty much useless for practical purposes. As the cheapy could be zoomed, I assumed that this feature would be standard on all cameras and thought that with the better quality, and higher resolution, video it would produce a zoomed image that still showed some detail.

 

[2000rpm]

I need a narrow FOV....Integrated screen....Decent quality video day and night........resolution of 1080p or greater.....RELIABLE!...GPS with speed display.....and motion detection......under £100.

Cobra 840E meets all the above except:
- night video quality (barely average)
- motion detection
- under £100 (currently well over £100 from the most reputable suppliers but I have seen them priced as low as £75 at times; prices seem to swing wildly almost daily and the bay of evil often has all kinds of things at low prices).


A weak point of a narrow field of view is that when going around a corner it's very possible for cars to pass from the opposite direction and not be seen by the camera, or for things to happen near the front wheels (e.g. cyclists) and the cam doesn't see it. Another downside is that it gives the perception that you're following other cars very closely.

If you're only going to run one cam, it would be best to run a fairly wide angle cam to avoid the blinkered view.

Not all manufacturers are 100% truthful when stating the viewing angle of their cam. Some quote horizontal, some quote diagonal, some also include unused pixels at the edges of the array in the field of view calculation.

Some paired pictures below from a Cobra 840E (narrow) and a Sony-sensor-equipped wide-angle cam (either Panorama II S or SGZC12RC).

-

 

[Dashmellow]

Neither the Gitup or Mobius have a screen and Webbex seems to be the only place that will sell the Mobius with the A lens. I may not need a screen but I want to be able to review footage immediately without having to take the camera or memory card out of the car and download it. I actually found one that quoted the lens as having an 80 degree FOV but I've looked at so many different ones on eBay and Amazon I've no idea which one it was. I'd prefer something half decent, or at least from a known manufacturer rather than a Chinese made clone of something else. That's why I was hoping someone on here would know of one.

Because the Mobius 1 camera has an industry standard DCIM folder in the top level of its directory structure you can easily load video from the Mobius' microSD card directly into a smart phone or iPad.

 

[Nigel]

If you're only going to run one cam, it would be best to run a fairly wide angle cam to avoid the blinkered view.

And then zoom in on playback to see the FOV you want to view at with the ability to pan left or right as required

 

[Dashmellow]

And then zoom in on playback to see the FOV you want to view at with the ability to pan left or right as required

I take your point about this but the problem is that if one needs to hand off footage to law enforcement, prosecutors and attorneys as I have, you need to give them the original footage. Asking them to zoom in when required or desirable is a non-starter.

I think the OP needs to find the best compromise that works best from him rather than doing something in post processing.

 

[Gilbertd]

Thanks very much to 2000rpm, it looks like it's the Cobra 840E then. Screen is perhaps smaller than I would like, the night performance is acceptable (my cheapy would only show the reflections from the chevrons and any lights, no sky detail and the Transit probably wouldn't even be visible) and the FOV is what I am looking for. Objects close in aren't so much a problem as it will be mounted at the top of the windscreen on a Range Rover and a Kangoo van rather than on the dash as on the example grabs.

With a wide FOV and zooming in on playback proves exactly what I mentioned about the number of pixels used not giving the detail. Anyone that thinks this is possible has been watching too much CSI, you can't put back something that was not captured in the first place. I've zoomed in on two of the example shots to demonstrate.

From the wide FOV camera, zoomed in on the roadsign.

Yet zooming on on the same area on the image from the Cobra with the narrow FOV means that not only can the roadsign be read, as it's reasonably local to me, I can even tell where it was taken!

There's far less zoom required to see the detail so it hasn't disappeared into individual pixels showing nothing of any use.

 

[Module 79L]

If it's detail you want when zooming with a wide angle lens dashcam, check THIS.

 

[jokiin]

If it's detail you want when zooming with a wide angle lens dashcam, check THIS.

Those images have been edited, maybe not the best example

 

[russ331]

I wouldn't trust anything by Pizdys, aka moral_hazard, his alter ego who is now banned from this site. Pizdys has a hidden agenda. He is not impartial or unbiased. Beware.

 

[Gilbertd]

Both cameras in those examples are still 1080p and you don't increase the number of pixels by zooming in. If the horizontal width of the subject is, for example, 108 feet wide (which with a wide lens is going to be something about 30 feet away), that's 10 pixels per foot. So no matter what you do, you'll never get better resolution than that. The only way you can increase the detail is by using a narrower FOV or increasing the resolution by a considerable margin. If you went up to a horizontal resolution of 2000+ pixels, then by doubling the number of pixels would mean you'd double the amount of detail.

An interesting discussion and I hope some people can see what I'm getting at. A wide FOV may allow you to see more but there's a lot less detail in what you can see. It will always be a trade off until much larger resolutions become common but that is going to mean bigger sensors resulting in bigger cameras needing more processing power to compress the data and faster memory to store the data in real time. I'm sure it will come in time but for the moment, I've now got a Cobra 840E on order.

 

[kamkar]

I have put a 8 mm lens on a x camera, and i like that, but only as a side dish to a wide angle camera.
If i was forced to make do with just 1 camera in my windscreen i would have to go for the wide angle.

The narrow FOV is valid and have its strong points, in low light i seem to be able to capture plates better with the 8 mm lens than the other x camera with the stock wide angle lens.
I can also read plates a bit further out, not by long, but it is possible.
Also the footage on the 8 mm lens is about as i can see it with my old eyes, i have tried to call out the plate on the car in front of me as soon as i was able to read it with my eyes, and then reviewing the footage i also seem to be able to read the plate in the footage at the same time.

But with the narrow FOV you miss out on a lot on the sides, even stuff thats not yet in frame of my two side mounted cameras ( mobius B lens and innovv C3 with 90 deg lens )

If you FF to 2:00 in this clip you can see wide Vs 8 mm lens on jovuu x cameras.

 

[2000rpm]

......An interesting discussion and I hope some people can see what I'm getting at......

I know exactly what you're getting at. That's why I have a Cobra 840E on the dash top and a Street Guardian SGZC12RC-V2 in the top corner of my windscreen, tucked behind my sun visor (with its control unit sitting in a cubby hole beneath the centre console/radio/heater controls etc).
The two cams with their very different view of the road make a good team.

 

[Module 79L]

Those images have been edited, maybe not the best example

Is it possible to artificially come up with details that don't exist in the raw footage, when cropping a still image?