disadvantage of strong wide angle

volker_e

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i´d like to buy a camera that has a recording angle of 130°, however the cam that i prefer has 170°.

often the questions arises: was the other car far enough away so that one could have reacted early enough. the wider the angle of the camera the further away the objects seem to be. when comparing 130° to 170° the objects seem to be artificially far away at 170°.

is that so or do i worry too much?
 
wider angles make things look further away, in reality though (and just to make things more complex) the cameras you see advertising 170° viewing angles have nothing like that, the widest ones are typically 135° max, most are less than that, the numbers they publish is just marketing BS unfortunately, better to look for video from the cameras you are considering and see how they look
 
If there's one thing I've learned from posting dashcam videos on Youtube and showing them to family/friends, it's this: the viewer's perception is everything.

If ever you have to show the video to somebody, wide-angle makes it "feel" like you were going too fast. The viewer's first impression will be that you're going too fast, and after that, you're doomed. So even though extra-wide seems like a great idea, and shows more of the road, it will hurt your chances of having a fair review of the action.

Remember with the recent Uber self-driving death, the police and media initially dismissed the death as "unavoidable" due to the pitch-blackness of the dashcam video (the video was either altered or extremely poor-quality). It didn't take long for other people to post cellphone videos showing that the road is quite reasonably lit, and not pitch-black like the video showed, but the self-driving car had already been judged blameless by the public.

Perhaps better would be to have two front dashcams? One of them a low-res low-brightness narrow-angle model, which can be used to create a favourable first impression, and the other cam a high-sensitivity wider-angle model to create a more accurate impression of the scene, if the narrow-angle cam doesn't adequately capture the other actions taking place.
 
Would be cool if the cameras could detect and log the distance to one or more cars in the footage, though i am sure most people seeing the footage would just say those 5 feet are BS it look to be at least 10 feet.
When i am stopped behind another car with 3-4 feet in between bumpers, then on my long range camera it feel like you are climbing thru the rear window :)
Though the lens do provide a 1:1 ratio in regard to plates i can see in the footage and the distance i can read them with my own eyes, but up close the narrow FOV of the lens play tricks on the brain, just opposite of what the wide angle lenses do.
When i am stopped behind a car i can read the dealer info on the plate holder with my eyes, i have a hard time doing that with the wide angle lenses.
 
Would be cool if the cameras could detect and log the distance to one or more cars in the footage
Hmm, this makes me wonder when AR might make it to dashcams - probably a bit off yet still. :LOL:
 
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