What are your optimal settings? Do you use HDR?

[Caerus]

So I finally got my car in after the dealer took a month to get it to me... Paid in full up front and was left out to dry. Could have gotten an extra month of interest in my account. I will never recommend that dealership to anyone I know. I probably should have just gone to the other dealer and drove it back myself. It would have only been a 15 or so hour drive back, crossing provinces.

But I finally have it and I love the car.

Anyway, the first thing I did was hook up the A118 and went for some test runs a couple of times during the day. I had everything set as default, except I turned button beeps off, and NTSC/60 as I'm in Canada.

Daytime seems to be okay, not as good as other videos I've seen. It's only been overcast/raining though, but the picture was relatively clear.

Night time on the other hand... wow. Mine looks substantially worse then every video and picture I've seen online. The other youtube videos and raws I've seen, have been dark sure, but at least they were pretty clear. Mine looks like a gritty mess and every light source is blurred and magnified, and you can't clearly make out anything at all.

You can see in the frame captures what I mean. Nothing is clear, all of the lights are overly blurred/exaggerated. Even the road lines and pedestrian crossing lines directly in front of the car, illuminated well by my headlights are not clear. These are also taken while I am stopped, so it's not due to any motion distortion.

So I was wondering if there are any settings that can be recommended for me to change to hopefully remedy this, or to at least make my picture similar to what I've seen elsewhere. Could it be the HDR? Should I up the exposure, or will that mess up the daytime recording?

I was pretty hyped, then I reviewed the videos and it's kind of a buzz kill.

 

[docbrazen]

My new A118 has same nighttime quality like yours. I have attached my screens for examples. These were also taken when car was stopped at red lights. Currently using default settings: 1080p, HDR on, auto whitebalance, and EV 0. Firmware: 20140714. I was expecting better night quality also.

 

[Geranimos]

sorry for a little off topic here, but how did you manage to switch the date format? i've went through the options in the camera and switched it but when it records, it uses the default format of YY/MM/DD. currently using firmware B40.20140523.001

 

[docbrazen]

sorry for a little off topic here, but how did you manage to switch the date format? i've went through the options in the camera and switched it but when it records, it uses the default format of YY/MM/DD. currently using firmware B40.20140523.001

The last selection on the date setting screen is to change the format, at least for firmware 20140714.

 

[reverend]

As daft as this sounds try uploading your clips to Youtube - that actually removes quite a lot of noise and you may find that your same clip uploaded to Youtube looks very similar to the output other people are getting. It's why you really need to watch raw footage to see what to really expect.

Alternatively if it is really different maybe there's a variant out there using a slightly different lens?

 

[docbrazen]

Lit highway quality is acceptable.


Camera seems to have issue with certain light sources in its frame of view, for example red lights and low streetlamps have a lot of bloom.


Sometimes the exposure gets very confused and video becomes extremely dark.

 

[Geranimos]

The last selection on the date setting screen is to change the format, at least for firmware 20140714.

i did that as well on the older firmware. didn't work. just updated to your firmware and give that a try tomorrow.

 

[mrebay10]

Like Caerus and docbrazen I was expecting better night time footage, okay i'm not expecting the clarity of the more expensive models but my picture quality at night is on par with the pictures posted... Daytime i'm happy with but it doesn't cope well at night and in all honesty if a car came at me in pitch black I doubt the cam would catch anything but a bright light as it passes....

Could someone who's managed to get a decent night shot from their cam post the settings they have used.... Cheers.

 

[Gibson99]

i'm happy with my night footage but it looks pretty similar to some of the shots here. maybe i'm ok with it since the night footage in my f70 is so BAD in comparison.

i'll try to make note of the settings but most things are at default. pretty sure i do have hdr on, and i intentionally left exposure and white balance at zero. still on the 0523 firmware. i didn't keep the raw files after i posted them to youtube but i'm sure there's some night footage on the cam right now. just gotta fix dns on my server so i can post the raw files.

some of the bloom almost looks like it's caused by a dirty windshield or lens. hard to tell though.

docbrazen - is it a safe guess you live in the heights or something? i noticed one of your red light pics was on shephard and the highway pics look like i-10 near there. i'm out northwest, almost in cypress but use that section of 10 every time i go downtown for work.

 

[docbrazen]

Tried cleaning windshield inside and out squeaky clean this weekend, did not seem to help with night video much. Most graininess in night video is from camera. Wish night video was better but can live with it. Daytime video is good.

Overall still pleased with camera as cost and discreet size are very good. Bought this camera with the understanding that it would be my first try with dash cameras.

 

[Gibson99]

it's my second dashcam. i bought an f70/i1000 dual cam setup, intending to primarily use it for recording my autocross racing, and just have it in my daily driver just in case. since the video from that is basically worthless at night, i'm thinking i'll move the f70 permanently to my race car (since it's fine during daylight or rain, and we don't race at night anymore), and i may get another of these a118's for my daily driver. or depending on funds, i may buy a S150 head unit and camera for my wife's car, since she says she wants in-dash navigation, then move her a118 to my daily driver.

 

[Caerus]

Yeah I tried uploading a night clip to youtube and the quality was still pretty ****e. It did soften the bloom a bit, but the overall picture quality was still just as bad.

I'm not sure if it's a different lens or not. The cam I have is from the FoxOffer1 ebay page so I don't believe the lens would have been changed without FoxOffer mentioning something.

I'm sure it does have the 170* wide angle lens as well, as you can see the insane amount of bend of the reflected dashboard.... I need to figure out some sort of filter attachment, or a way to angle the cam to minimize it. It takes up a big portion of the frame. I drive a Veloster, so it's pretty low to the ground and the windscreen is sloped and rounded quite aggressively.

I will also try another test tonight after giving my windscreen a good washing. Not sure if it will make a difference, but I'll give it a shot.

But yeah, if anyone figures out the most optimal settings to use for overall picture quality at night (without right buggering up the day) let me know. My driving is about 50/50 day and night, so I would like night video to at least be acceptable.

 

[reverend]

To be honest looking again at the screencaps on here they look about right - bloom around lights at night is pretty normal across a lot of cams.

In terms of cars coming at you once they're close they're a blur on every camera I've seen yet at night - if they're stopped or you're moving at a very slow speed in comparison you'll be able to read details but if they're coming at you at any speed you'll just get blurs of the headlights when it's dark.

Even at dusk you can see number plates turning into a blurry mess depending on the exact conditions - we need a sensor that can bend the laws of physics - from the sounds of it the Panorama X2 could potentially have the best night time footage yet but it will look strange to some as it dips the brightness when close to a car to try and make sure it can read the details.

 

[Caerus]

I did another night trip with a clean windscreen and the quality improved just a smidgen. It's still overall pretty bad though. I guess there's nothing I can do, it is what it is. I also tried increasing the exposure by one step up at +1/3 and all it really did was over brighten the daytime to where every car looked like a light bulb and night time didn't improve anyway.

I do see what you mean though, just overall, night time quality isn't very good with dash cams. I was just hoping for slightly better than what the A118 can provide, given what I had seem of it. The Panorama X2 looks promising, but I'm sure it's going to be quite expensive.