Question about upcoming Street Guardian products.

[TonyM]

Approximately how many different camera options are you working on at any one time?

 

[jokiin]

it varies but generally a couple at a time, don't have the resources to do any more than that

 

[kamkar]

Well lest hope you will soon be able to have 4 cooking and it will make economical sense to do that.

I cant see the first 4K dashcam being far off

 

[jokiin]

I cant see the first 4K dashcam being far off

someone will probably do one at some stage, not in a hurry to do one ourselves unless there's some type of technology breakthrough that improves low light performance, I would find a larger 1080p sensor a lot more useful than a larger megapixel sensor of the same size, we are restricted to work within available/affordable/supported hardware solutions at this stage, we don't do enough turnover to get the attention needed for any support outside of that so we work with what's available to us

 

[kamkar]

Yeah i am torn on the matter myself, for the daytime it would off course be perfect, but nighttime not so much.
Then again i think even with the best 1080p sensor you will not catch a lot more at night that i assume a 4 K one would do, dont think either will ever do that, or at least not anytime soon.

Sure a big pixel 1080p sensor will have a lot more of thats outside the beams of light from your headlights, but as it will undoubtedly still use a slow exposure, all of that will just be a blur anyway when you are driving.

4K would be interesting to me on the grounds that i do at least 80% of my driving in daytime, and if it was able to just do mobius level performance at night i wouldn't be too bummed out about that.
I have lowered my expectations to night time performance of dashcams a lot, fully realizing that what i dream about is far from ready for main stream like dashcams in general.

 

[jokiin]

the challenge is consumers take issue with awesome day performance that delivers poor night performance, there's an expectation that day and night results should be more consistent, the enthusiast gets it but the average Joe in the street doesn't so it's hard to make that commercially acceptable

 

[kamkar]

Yeah see that a lot on here.

I am also sure when technology finally will be able to make up much better night performance it will get really hard, just now getting the best out of your hardware in daytime is not easy.
And i am sure when we get around to being able to do the same with night footage then the issues just multiply compared to getting good footage in daytime today.
I even think by then we might need to have lenses with apertures in them or filters to regulate a little in daytime, or the cameras will have to use super fast exposure times though the ISO setting is like 50.

Now its just ISO & exposure time in dashcams, but by then we might need something more to make perfect footage in both ends of the spectrum.

 

[jokiin]

getting the best results under all situations is very challenging, in my opinion there is no product in the market right now that does that, without exception all have room for improvement

 

[kamkar]

yeah, the road to 24/H perfection ahead of us is long, so long i for one prefer to cover the distance in the comfort of my car
And i will do that with whatever good camera i can get my hands on.

 

[kamkar]

I think i grammatically killed that first sentence above but too lazy to fix it

 

[jokiin]

I think i grammatically killed that first sentence above but too lazy to fix it

not something I would pick up on anyway, I have communicated in broken English on a daily basis for the last 12 years or so, small grammatical errors rarely get noticed

 

[kamkar]

I know what you mean, have been looking at a french dealer of cheap Chinese phones, and its clear they dont do any proofreading on the material they get from China.
Can also give one a good chuckle now and then, and a sneaking feeling that Chinese Grammar is unlike many other languages i know, and then sort of spur the interest in me Learning the language, but then again im too old for that stuff now and no need learning anything you will never use for sure.

Or its just google translate that "weirdify" Chinese, cuz i have seen how it handle the Danish language and thats often a laughing matter for me too.

 

[jokiin]

direct translations often make no sense, the reason so many instruction manuals read so poorly, really need context and meaning before deciding on what the correct translation should be

 

[DrekiTech]

someone will probably do one at some stage, not in a hurry to do one ourselves unless there's some type of technology breakthrough that improves low light performance, I would find a larger 1080p sensor a lot more useful than a larger megapixel sensor of the same size, we are restricted to work within available/affordable/supported hardware solutions at this stage, we don't do enough turnover to get the attention needed for any support outside of that so we work with what's available to us

What about doing a dash cam with the 2k60, maybe with something like the OV4689 (or a similar higher end sensor)?

I'd agree though, low light performance is more important than high resolution at this point.

 

[jokiin]

we have some 1080p60 options that will be out early next year, 2k is still a compromise we don't want to make at this point

 

[kamkar]

I do like high FPS and the ability it give me to slow things down in my youtube uploads.
I also feel its a valid tool to increase your chance of getting that crucial capture in a situation.
Not sure if even higher FPS will be even better, i know if i got my hands on a 1080/120 camera the first thing i would do is test that out in my windscreen.

 

[kamkar]

Just to underline, i do not think 60 FPS footage = 2 X the chance of getting that just right capture, but i do think it have a higher chance than regular 30 FPS footage.
Cuz i think as that event happen at the edge of your frame even if you have 2 frames in the space of one 30 FPS frame then at least in the daytime the camera is properly using the same values ( ISO & exposure ) and since the 60 FPS camera most likely use the same setting as the 30 FPS camera for those 2 frames and then those 2 frames are most likely captured with the same individual settings.
But i think when things start to get marginal then a 60 FPS camera will increase the chance of that good capture.

Then again i do a lot of thinking and thats not always a good thing.

 

[niko]

In good sunny day 1080/60 will give a little bit more details reading vs 1080/30. At night I havn't seen any difference in details reading (@ numberplates) 1080/60 vs 1080/30, only slightly smoother video playback.

 

[sshazam]

Well lest hope you will soon be able to have 4 cooking and it will make economical sense to do that.

I cant see the first 4K dashcam being far off

4k would eat up your memory card like theres no tomorrow though.

I think focusing on better 1080/60 quality and a higher bit rate would be a better solution.
I'd rather have higher quality at a lower resolution.

 

[kamkar]

No doubt. high bitrate do the same.

My x camera with the modified firmware make 3 minute files almost 1 Gb in size with 45 mbit, and thats just insane for dashcam use, at least dashcam with a SD card for storage.
Thats why i strongly argue for something new to store our footage on, personally i would prefer a hard drive of some sorts in the laptop size.