Dual Purpose Dashcam - Roadtrip + Stills

[Torstenator]

Hi all,

I'm travelling from SF to Denver in May, and am looking at recording the journey. I've researched a lot of cams but can't find anything that fits the bill. I would be grateful if anyone could help me find a camera with the following specs.

- Must be able to tape 3 hours of footage continuously
- Must have wifi/a way of uploading videos to the cloud so I don't have to carry around endless memory cards
- Must be able to take good quality pics, with zoom capabilities.

At present, I may buy two separate cameras as I think that is the only way I can fulfil my needs. A separate digital camera for stills, and a dashcam for the journey. I would be tempted to get a normal digital camera from the US where the 30 mins recording limit is lifted, and use as a dashcam, but would love to hear any suggestions.

Thanks

 

[DashCamMan]

In this case, maybe a good smartphone (iPhone 6 or perhaps Sony Xperia Z3 - uses an Exmor sensor), mount and dash cam app would meet your needs for this journey.

This subforum has more info on this topic.

 

[GJHS]

Hi all,

I'm travelling from SF to Denver in May, and am looking at recording the journey. I've researched a lot of cams but can't find anything that fits the bill. I would be grateful if anyone could help me find a camera with the following specs.

- Must be able to tape 3 hours of footage continuously
- Must have wifi/a way of uploading videos to the cloud so I don't have to carry around endless memory cards
- Must be able to take good quality pics, with zoom capabilities.

At present, I may buy two separate cameras as I think that is the only way I can fulfil my needs. A separate digital camera for stills, and a dashcam for the journey. I would be tempted to get a normal digital camera from the US where the 30 mins recording limit is lifted, and use as a dashcam, but would love to hear any suggestions.

Thanks

None of the dash cams have three hour batteries, so an extra USB battery will be in order and should give you all day runtime, depending on the size. Just charge when you sleep.

None of the cameras have WiFi cable of uploading to the cloud. A 64Gb card should give you 8 hours of recording that each night you can upload on your laptop or take a look at something like an EyeFi card that will upload automatically when you get to a hot spot. EyeFi hasn't been proven in dash cams yet since you will need a SD to Micro SD adapter.

Buy yourself a good camera for stills, nothing will beat that for true quality photos.

A camera like the Mobius would be a good choice since it's very small, the battery in the latest versions will give you two hours outside the car to record sites you see, just attach it to the brim of a ball cap for hands free, you have a ton of in car mounting options and it also has a great time lapse video mode (no need to process photos)

 

[Torstenator]

Thanks for the responses.

Would a Transcend Drivepro be worthwhile? It will be able to connect to my ipad via wifi and looks to be rated pretty highly. The only thing I don't understand is loop recording - does this mean all the footage would be shot in 1, 3 and 5 minute increments? Is it easy to merge together?

 

[jokiin]

Think of the loop settings like chapter points on a DVD

 

[DashCamMan]

The Transcend Drivepro is a decent dash camera and one of the cheapest with WiFi. It uses a supercapacitor not a battery so you need to have a separate camera for digital stills.

Most cameras record in these small segments (1, 3, 5 minutes) and you will need to merge with some type of editing software. Some cameras can be set to record continuously but as the file sizes get large there is a risk of issues (FAT32 4 GB limit file size limit, corrupt file would cause all your trip to be lost, etc.)