Problem: Day and night driving....

[dirtymoney]

I leave for work at 7pm and return home at 3am so this presents a problem. In order for my A118 to work well at night I have to put the EV setting to the max. But the next day the sun (which I am basically driving into on the horizon) completely washes out everything on video.

Any solutions?

edit: while I am at it. I have my A118 mounted to the plastic windshield trim panel on my jeep wrangler and I would like to be able to have the camera swivel to the left or right at a moment's notice so it can view the driver's side window for recording police interactions if I get pulled over. Does anyone know of a simple low profile mount that is basically two small panels that has a ratcheting/swivel mechanism in between them? Something that looks like this (crappy mockup) ....

 

[Gibson99]

i don't have any suggestions for the night/day switch except maybe sticking a piece of sunglasses lens in front of it during the day.

as for the traffic stop pivot thing, it sounds like you want something like a miniature lazy susan but with little clicks or something to make it hold in position. maybe you can cannibalize an old cell phone holster belt clip to make one yourself.

one big problem i see though is that the wrangler's windshield is nearly vertical, so rotating the camera on a lazy susan type thing would only pivot the camera lens up and leave it pointed at the windshield frame, then you'd still have to twist the lens itself to see out the driver window, and then the picture would be rotated sideways.

specifically because your jeep's windshield is almost vertical, perhaps a better solution would be a simple hinge, secured with velcro or something. just like a regular door hinge, only smaller. put the hinge/pivot point on the right edge of the camera, then on the left edge, a spot of velcro on both the windshield header and the camera itself so that for 99.9% of your driving, the camera will be pointing forward. if you get pulled over, you simply pivot the camera on its hinge so that the lens is no longer pointed out the windshield, but is instead looking left - the left side of the camera (with the sd card slot) will now be pointing towards the back of the car. benefit here is quickness, and with the wide angle lens you don't have to be accurate. the picture won't be perfectly level but at least it won't be 90 degrees sideways. then when you're done with the traffic stop, "close" the door hinge so the camera's pointed forwards again, and be on your way.

a hinge like this might introduce a new rattle which the camera's mic will pick up as being very loud, so you'll need to choose your hinge carefully or your videos will sound horrible. same possibility with a rotating mount (maybe the head of a tripod would be better if you really want to stay with the lazy susan idea) so just consider that first.

one other idea - skip the hinge idea entirely. apply some velcro to the right side of the camera, and the other half of the velcro to the windshield header next to the camera's mount. if you get stopped, you can slide the camera up off its mount, then stick the side of the camera to the velcro. this won't introduce any rattles, and the velcro should hold long enough for pretty much any traffic stop where you aren't being arrested and dragged out of your car.