just took the cam out for a test drive at night on some really dark roads and found i REALLY need to do the hot pixel calibration - it's not near as obvious during the day. but otherwise it's doing pretty good. It's doing frame doubling even though i had it set to 1080p60 - this is very obvious when stepping through frame by frame in VLC. plus it doesn't look very smooth and there's a fair bit of motion blur. but there's a surprising amount of detail in the grass on the side of the road (at low speeds only), and you could still read some street signs. since i went out at almost 1am, i didn't come up behind anyone to where you could test license plate readability - almost had the roads to myself.
anyway, here are some raw files, since youtube would probably murder them.
http://gibson99.com/download/RawVideo/A119-pre-production/0426-firmware/
first file (ends in 037) starts with my high beams on, just cruising along Fry road on the west side of town. They're starting to build new neighborhoods out there, but there's still some dark areas left, but also a few street lights and one brand new traffic light that was REALLY fricken bright - the LEDs in it actually hurt my eyes similar to when someone has their high beams on coming straight at you.
second one (039) starts off with me talking about some flags i could see silhouetted against the city glow, lighting up the clouds (it's been overcast all day). also has more lights from stores, street lights, and then a little water on the windshield as i try to clean it with the sprayer - so it's kinda like having rain at night, right?
third file (041) starts as i turn into a neighborhood, and then turn off my headlights (parking lights still on) and just drive using the street lights. i didn't leave them off long though, and drove through the neighborhood a little then turned back around. right at the end i turned off my lights again but this time in an unlit section of road. i could barely make out the centerline and curbs with my eyes but i expected the camera to only be able to see the street lights off in the distance, and have it be totally black in front of me. however, the camera did better than i expected - you can see the road as a lighter section ahead of me and the grass on either side as black. see attached screenshot (which highlights just how bad i need to do the hot pixel calibration!)
i had my regular CH-100B rolling too, so i'm going to try to put together a comparison clip between the two since both use
sony image sensors quality image sensors that work pretty good at night, but the CH-100b records at a much lower bitrate, and only does 30fps. but not tonight. it's 1:40am and i should really try to go to sleep.
edit: ok, still can't sleep. since i already copied the ch-100B files off the sd card, i figured i'd take a screenshot at the same point as the one from the a119. you can easily tell which is which by the text at the bottom. when i turn off my lights in the dark section at the end, you can't see the road at all in the ch-100b. i also posted the raw video files from the CH-100B that pretty much line up with the files above, since both cameras were set to 3 minute loop, but they didn't start at exactly the same time. they're here:
http://gibson99.com/download/RawVideo/CH-100B/ - i posted front and rear since it's a 2ch system.
these files also show just how different the audio quality is between the two cameras. CH-100B is much louder but doesn't sound overdriven, even when i have loud music on (there's no music in these videos - just road noise and the air conditioner).