OK, here we are for take two with the Mangoal camera comparisons. I've removed two other cameras so the Mangoal gets a clear view of the road ahead without giant black blobs in the way that can potentially muck with the exposure settings. The strips of masking tape you see in the Mangoal image are my markers so I can put my other cameras back. I timed this comparison so the rear wheels of the GMC pickup truck are on the painted white line on the road surface. I am at a full stop and the truck is passing by at about 35mph.
Mangoal Full Frame:
Here is the same from a known 2.5K camera:
And the same scene from a known 4K camera:
Comparison of Plate Capture from Arrow #1 Above:
Here is a zoom and crop of the rear plate from each camera made from the images directly above when the rear wheels of the truck we directly on top of the white painted line on the road in the image above. In this instance, the image quality of Mangoal zoom&crop looks closer the the known 4K than it does to the known 2.5K.
Comparison of Plate Capture from Arrow #2 Above:
Here is the same comparison from a few frames later, when the rear tires are just past the black shadow line on the road about 15 feet beyond the first comparison point shown above. The best capture is clearly the 4K camera on the right. Both the Mangoal and the 2.5K capture are readable, but the "Y" appears to have transformed into a "T" in both images. Here is where a true 4K sensor begins to show it's value. The Mangoal image is also starting to become indistinct at the bottom of the numbers (especially on the right side) when compared to the known 2.5K camera.
Also noteworthy in this second set of plate comparisons is that the known 2.5K and 4K cameras are now producing a mostly rectangular image of the license plate, whereas the Mangoal camera is still producing a plate that most resembles a parallelogram. This larger distortion level indicates Mangoal's use of a lower quality lens than the other two. Curiously, the 4K camera is mounted on my windshield TO THE LEFT of the Mangoal camera (which is mounted exactly in the center of the window), which is a disadvantage for the 4K camera since I'm focusing on a truck that is passing on the right side of my car (greatest viewing angle). The known 4K camera is clearly using a superior lens.
Comparison of Plate Capture from Arrow #3 Above:
And a few frames later after the truck has moved up a few more feet and the rear tires are just past the line indicated by arrow #3 above. At this point, both the Mangoal and the 2.5K captures are unreadable while the 4K can still be read. The Mangoal zoom now looks least like a license plate of these three images and still exhibits lens distortion resulting in a parallelogram rendering of the plate.
What started off as a nice presentation by the Mangoal upscaling in comparison #1 began to deteriorate and only a few feet/frames later, the known Starvis2 sensors produced a superior image. I have several additional sets of these image comparisons, but they all follow this same pattern, so posting them seems like a lot of work that won't reveal any new information.
