Something better than Blueskysea B1W

[yuppicide]

I have had the dash cam for about a week now. It's fantastic. The video quality is indeed very good. Low light is not as good though. I was driving in the daytime the other day down a tree lined street. It wasn't totally dark but it was darker than normal. I played back the video my car took and zoomed in on a person on the side of the road. They are horribly pixelated.

I am interested in something with better quality and understand I'll probably have to pay more. I want something that is single-camera, and automatically starts recording when the car starts. I do not need any other features like g-sensor as I do not plan to hardwire it. I do like the cell phone connectivity to download videos even though it is slow I would rather not take the camera out of my car every time.

 

[kamkar]

The best low light performers are not like a quantum leap over the sensor in the B1W, but they are more easy on the eye so things are a bit brighter, but if you hit pause the more you can see still suffer from motion blur too.
The best low light performers today have the Sony IMX 291 sensor.
Most of us just eject the memory card and bring that to the computer and card reader, though i have a few cameras where i have opted to mount with magnets so it is more easy to bring the whole camera ( side and rear cameras )
BUT ! A few of us have also had unintentional memory card ejection, some have even lost it or had to take seats out of the car to get to it, other just vanish like the Bermuda triangle.
So you learn to be careful with the little suckers,,,,,, actually i had one launch on me today, but it landed nicely in the recessed speedo of my little cheap car.
The cameras them self make for awful mass storage devises with pretty slow transfer speeds Vs what you can get in a proper card reader in a fast USB port and a fast memory card.
Some cards i have give 12 MB/s from a camera but 90 MB/s in the card reader, dont matter much for a file or two now and then, but if you have a lot to move it will take a lot longer.

 

[yuppicide]

The best low light performers are not like a quantum leap over the sensor in the B1W, but they are more easy on the eye so things are a bit brighter, but if you hit pause the more you can see still suffer from motion blur too.
The best low light performers today have the Sony IMX 291 sensor.
Most of us just eject the memory card and bring that to the computer and card reader, though i have a few cameras where i have opted to mount with magnets so it is more easy to bring the whole camera ( side and rear cameras )
BUT ! A few of us have also had unintentional memory card ejection, some have even lost it or had to take seats out of the car to get to it, other just vanish like the Bermuda triangle.
So you learn to be careful with the little suckers,,,,,, actually i had one launch on me today, but it landed nicely in the recessed speedo of my little cheap car.
The cameras them self make for awful mass storage devises with pretty slow transfer speeds Vs what you can get in a proper card reader in a fast USB port and a fast memory card.
Some cards i have give 12 MB/s from a camera but 90 MB/s in the card reader, dont matter much for a file or two now and then, but if you have a lot to move it will take a lot longer.

This girl on the side of the road literally looked like a pixelated picture of Big Foot or something. Other than that the camera is fantastic.

I don't like taking the memory card out because 1 - it's hard to get at as I clip my fingernails short, so I have to use something to push.. and I don't like to touch it when it's on the window. I want the mounting sticky thing to not come loose. So I'd rather not touch it.

 

[TonyM]

What is the cheapest IMX291 camera at the moment? (Or the cheaper IMX307 which is also a STARVIS sensor)
Anything better than the Viofo A119S?

 

[kamkar]

Yes all cameras do some degree of pixilation / blocking, not least in high detail density areas, this are down to the still modest bitrate dashcams use for thermal reasons, and so the camera have to jump over where the fence are lowest and then crank out the blocked areas as it cant process that much info that fast with the current bitrate.
You almost have to double or at least add 1/3 more bitrate to get rid of that, but no one make cameras like that now, only some like the Mobius maxi can do pretty high bitrates but that in turn also push out really large files, so instead of a 3 minute file being around 300 MB you will see 3 minute files around 5-600 MB or more as i have seen upwards of 1000 MB using modified firmwares, which in turn mean room for less on your memory card.
BUT ! the Mobius Maxi are also not a stellar performer in low light due to the sensor it use.
Some of us in desperation have fitted memory cards with a little pice of plastic to get a better grip on the sucker, cuz crawling on my knees on pea sized rubble again for 45 minutes, that i really dont want to try again. ( torture method )

Viofo A119S seem to be a nice camera.