Landscapes / road trips: any advice would be appreciated

[Lakeman]

Hi All, I'm @Lakeman, a Brit who's been living and working in Switzerland for 10 years. Looks like I'll be heading back to the UK in a year or so but it's occurred to me that I don't have any video of road trips round this beautiful country. So I need to set up some sort of video capability. Can I ask for some advice please?

I've read a ton of posts here and reviews elsewhere, and I'm quite confused about whether a dash cam is the best solution or some other sort of video technology (e.g. action cam). The normal dash cam advantages re collision evidence is not my priority though it would be handy to have. I'm looking for something that will capture landscapes so I'm guessing something wide-angle would be best though I'm aware of issues reported with images softening at the edges with v wide lenses. Ideally I'm looking for something that could record rear views and also sometimes side views. So perhaps something that I could manually twist sideways? Or would a 4-camera setup work best? Or am I asking too much?

I'm not a professional vlogger so I can accept some drop in quality if it means a more convenient/flexible setup. Needless to say I don't want to invest in a lot of pricey pro-standard gear but I'm willing to spend a bit if it means getting something that works really well. Does anyone have any suggestions please? Thank you very much in advance.

 

[Nigel]

What sort of vehicle/bike?
And what sort of quality are you after?
And what are you going to do with the recorded video, days and days of archived footage takes up a lot of space and is generally not very interesting unless you turn it into a movie of some sort with just the interesting clips, but that depends on your video editing ability. For trips over the Alpine passes you may want to turn a lot of it into timelapse.

What I would use for a car:

Viofo A129 Pro Dual Dashcam - 4K Front + 1080 Rear

Viofo A129 Pro Dual Dashcam - 4K Front + 1080 Rear The dash camera we have been waiting for, a 4K version of our favorite A129 Duo that records real 4K at a decent bitrate, and works at night! There are a few people with early versions of this camera now, so here is a thread to post your videos...

dashcamtalk.com

Video is not always the best option, a carefully taken photo or video slideshow can be rather more impressive, so collecting frame grabs from the recorded video, or having a decent photo camera can be valuable.

Switzerland is a great place for photos and video frame grabs:

 

[SawMaster]

As long as you can monitor the card use and swap cards or download what you've got, you can get far better daytime images with an action cam than with a dashcam, as they are more tuned for that purpose. Dashcam video is tuned for detail capture day and night at the expense of true colorization, contrast, and brightness.

Some of the new 4K dashcams can get you nice images, and of course you get the benefits dashcam users want like file looping and file-locking for detected events. So one of those might do well enough for you here and leave you with gear which you can use later on too.. An action cam could be used now then sold later- there's always a market for them- but you may lose some value in the sale.

I'd suggest that you look at the dashcam vids from the best 4K cams today and decide if they are good enough for your wants.

Phil

 

[Lakeman]

Thanks for the prompt reply, @Nigel -- and those are great pictures. I presume these were taken with a good quality conventional camera? You make some good points. I agree totally that stills can be better than video but i suppose I was thinking that capturing the drive along the San Bernardino Pass for instance (which is possibly what your 3rd picture shows) would be better than standard snaps. The time lapse suggestion could work well in some circumstances. To answer your questions:

• I have a saloon car (an ancient Lexus with RH drive).
• Quality? Well as stated I'm not expecting pro quality footage but I'd like to be able to be able to capture snowy mountains in the background, or verdant summer hillsides. What I don't want is just big greyish-white skies that I see on some dash cam footage. I'd like to be able to see some detail (though again, I appreciate that I won't get super-sharp definition). This is more important than number plate clarity which is why I'm hesitating over a conventional dash cam.
• You're right about the space issue of storing endless video files so I'm not planning to do that. Ideally I'd like to be able to extract the best bits from a day's drive and knit them together -- let's say 30 minutes in total -- with a bit of audio narrative added. So yes, the files would need a fair bit of editing and manipulation. As for what to do with it, good question. If it's spectacular I might be tempted to stick it on YouTube or Facebook but depends on quality. My initial motivation is to have a record of some great landscapes, mainly for my own benefit.

Re the Viofo 129 Pro Duo, yes, I've read plenty of reviews here and elsewhere, and that was high up my short list. In fact I was about to pull the trigger when I thought it might be worth posting the question here first. The only slight downside to the Viofo is that the front camera seems to have a relatively narrow angle (relatively speaking) of 130 degrees. But that may not be a deal breaker if the convenience/general quality is high.

 

[SawMaster]

In all honesty and reality, 130 degrees FOV is about all that any dashcam gives, even though you see many advertised claims for larger. It's just an advertising gimmick designed to sell more cams.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

The only slight downside to the Viofo is that the front camera seems to have a relatively narrow angle (relatively speaking) of 130 degrees.

Don't trust published FOV specifications, you never know what they measured (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, lens/sensor/recording)! The A129 Pro is about right for your use, given that with its 4K resolution you can zoom in a bit and still have decent quality video.

For the skies, generally dashcams burn them out in order to get good detail in the shadows, an action cam will do the opposite and have the shadows too dark. The A129 Pro has a sensor with better dynamic range than most and does OK for skies most of the time if you turn the EV setting down a couple of steps, and then I find it does better overall than an action camera, action cams can be a bit disappointing in a car depending on lighting conditions. The framegrabs in post #3 on the A129 Pro thread I linked to above probably have EV turned down 1 step since the clouds look OKish. Snow can be a real challenge for a dashcam unless the road is covered in it.

My photos were taken with an Olympus point and shoot superzoom, a dashcam with very wide angle lens will not give the same result, but it will catch things that the photo camera would miss because you have to point it and press the shutter.

 

[Lakeman]

In all honesty and reality, 130 degrees FOV is about all that any dashcam gives, even though you see many advertised claims for larger. It's just an advertising gimmick designed to sell more cams.

Phil

Thanks to you both for making the same point -- that's reassuring. Or sort of reassuring. I'd prefer to be able to trust those 'advertised claims' as they often come at a premium, and one should get what's promised.

It's interesting that both you and @Nigel have different views on action cam vs dash cam as it reflects a general puzzlement I have about the wide disparity I see in reviews. As mentioned, I've invested quite a bit of time recently in reading and viewing reviews and it's a little frustrating. After a few days I'd settled on Nextbase, and needed to choose between the 522GW and 622GW as they seemed to be top of most of the well-known magazine and tech website reviews. But then I discovered this site and find that Nextbase is dismissed as hopelessly unreliable, and the Viofo range seems to get top billing. This opinion is backed up by plenty of YouTube reviews -- but there are also several that explain why I shouldn't go near Viofo! I guess it's the same for all tech gadgets. At the moment I'm thinking I should just go for the Viofo A129 Duo Pro and stop agonising over it. Like a lot of things I guess much depends on what you get used to in terms of usability and general design.

 

[SawMaster]

You won't go very wrong with the Viofo as far as image quality- that is where the company excels with it's dashcams, and no other dashcam brand beats them in that regard Only a couple other dashcams are in that league. There have been some issues regarding parking mode but I expect those will be worked out in time. As with anything, you should not absolutely count on the future- base your decisions made today on what you can get from things today. Very glad you didn't go Nextbase, their current series of dashcams are chock-full of problems right now Hopefully they will get things worked out.

I have no action cam experience, but I have a friend who flies Quads and what he shows me of what he and his friends do is impressive. Plus I've seen many other vids with and about them. Some folks here have used action cams in cars- I defer to that as I haven't. If you want more in-depth knowledge on action cams I'd recommend the forum HERE. DCT member "Nutsey" runs it and they also 'hot-rod' their cams with modified FW and lens-swaps so over there you can find all the potential available to you as well as great info on 'stock' action cams.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

I don’t think you want an action camera since you want to record the drive, which is what a dashcam is designed to do.

Action cameras generally have too much FOV and will include the A-pillers along with some strong reflections of them which a CPL will not remove. They also get the exposure wrong for a driving video. You don’t want standard dashcam exposure either, but the A129 Pro with a little -EV will be OK.

You can use a dashcam as an action camera, these video clips were from A129 and A129 Pro, the A129 Pro one doesn't have great sky, but it was 9:05 PM and the headlight was blinding the camera, hence the cab being full of flames, an action cam would really struggle with that:

 

[Lakeman]

I can see that opinion is divided . I think I will go with a dash cam though I appreciate the points made in the counter view. Part of it is the convenience factor of a device that will be used only inside the car. Maybe if I was also a mountain biker / snow boarder / or into hang gliding I could find plenty of other uses for it. But it's really just for the car so I may as well go for the purpose-built option. Thanks again for the information.

BTW, the video of the Flying Scotsman is excellent. Not sure why it should bring a lump to the throat but it does.

 

[Hillbilly]

We had a dashcam on a 13000km trip through USA and when we came home got sick of endless tarseal and SFA else.. Many years ago a friend did similar and had a video camera running in the car with the same result

Boring as bat****

 

[Nigel]

Not sure why it should bring a lump to the throat but it does.

Remember that the sound is important, although driving a Lexus rather than a steam engine, you may have to use some music!

 

[Nigel]

We had a dashcam on a 13000km trip through USA and when we came home got sick of endless tarseal and SFA else.. Many years ago a friend did similar and had a video camera running in the car with the same result

Boring as bat****

Nobody is going to watch 13000Km of video, you just need a few minutes of the interesting stuff, there must have been some!

Some places are more interesting than others, the last video I posted:

 

[Lakeman]

We had a dashcam on a 13000km trip through USA and when we came home got sick of endless tarseal and SFA else.. Many years ago a friend did similar and had a video camera running in the car with the same result

Boring as bat****

I agree. As much as I love driving in the US -- and I've done plenty of it -- it's the last place I'd want to video-record a road trip. Everything is so spread out and featureless that you could edit a week of driving into 30 minutes or so. The pleasure of driving there is more about a 'feeling', a sense of liberation I suppose, given the wide-open spaces, than a tumult of incredible scenery (though some of that does pop up now and then!). Europe is mostly different, where everything's more concentrated and more varied. Driving through the average small French or German or Italian or English/Scottish/Irish village is quite different from driving through most small American towns. Likewise, Switzerland is a very small country with ridiculously pretty towns and scenery.

 

[kamkar]

I would not use a dashcam for such recordings, the lesser quality of those would PO me i am sure.
My experiments using action cameras have been better, though they also have a field of view on the too large side, but their higher bitrate carry the footage better.
If i got to do my dream AU / USA tours i would have to lens mod a action camera, and bring a sweet DSlr + tripod for the stationary video + photos
But i dont think the action camera would be recording all the time like a action camera, probably be on the windscreen and be turned on when things seem extra cool.

No matter the drive distance you need to speed things up in post, no one want to sit for hours on end looking at that video, so compressing 1 hour of footage to 10 minutes are good, and maybe run the really cool spots in real speed.

 

[needles]

I agree. As much as I love driving in the US -- and I've done plenty of it -- it's the last place I'd want to video-record a road trip. Everything is so spread out and featureless that you could edit a week of driving into 30 minutes or so. The pleasure of driving there is more about a 'feeling', a sense of liberation I suppose, given the wide-open spaces, than a tumult of incredible scenery (though some of that does pop up now and then!). Europe is mostly different, where everything's more concentrated and more varied. Driving through the average small French or German or Italian or English/Scottish/Irish village is quite different from driving through most small American towns. Likewise, Switzerland is a very small country with ridiculously pretty towns and scenery.

"I've done plenty of it"

I'm calling straight BS on that. Laughable BS. Were you driving back and forth in f* Kansas or something? The variety of scenery you can see in a single stretch of road makes f* Switzerland the peak of monotony. Not calling it ugly, it is an absolutely stunning place, but take a look in few spots and you've pretty well seen all of it. Not trying to be a d*, but don't make derisive s* up just to try and make a point.

Much love.