Where to mount dashcam for better video quality?

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How far from the windshield/high should it be mounted? I put it almost as high as it can fit.

I have a Vantrue R2 set at 2560x1080@30fps. If I maintain a safe distance, the license plate number is pretty much never legible. What am I missing? Is it because it's too close/far from windshield?




At night time is is much worse


The glare is awful

 

[jokiin]

you're never going to see licence plates in those types of night shots, focus could be off but not easy to tell from the samples you have provided, show us something static in a car park or similar where there are a lot of other vehicles about

 

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you're never going to see licence plates in those types of night shots, focus could be off but not easy to tell from the samples you have provided, show us something static in a car park or similar where there are a lot of other vehicles about

Not even in park.. My windshield does need a bit of cleaning....

 

[jokiin]

sorry, I should have been more specific, need a shot like that taken during the day to judge focus

 

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sorry, I should have been more specific, need a shot like that taken during the day to judge focus

I could see the plate on the trunk to my left in video (that was less than 1 car distance). During the day the snapshot is almost 10 times in size (3.4MB) than the one at night (380KB).

 

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For night shots, I will disable IR and see if that helps at all.

 

[jokiin]

not the best pic to make a judgement call but the focus does look a little soft, size of day v night screenshots is not relevant

 

[kamkar]

Yeah focus do look a little soft, and you will never be able to read plates on cars you keep a safe distance to, at least not if you and i have the same idea about what safe is.
Its the problem of the wide angle lenses on dashcameras, they mess up distance feeling in footage and by dooing so allso ruin ther own chance of getting a plate capture at a fairly modest distance.
Even with my just about 50 year old eyes i can be at a distance where i can read plates allright myself, but in the footage the car is far avay and there is no plate capture.
To change this you will need a narrow FOV lens about 4 - 6 mm, this will make the car and the plate on it appear in the footage just about as you see it live, bud for that gain you will miss a lot of the stuff going on at the side as a 4 - 6 mm lens is down at 90 degrees FOV and less.

I an contemplating a "long range" lens on a camera beside my wide angle front camera, and its this or maybe the new Lukas/qvia that have optical zoom, but this is a pretty new product so no word out yet about the benefits of that zoom lens and how it behave in its auto mode.

Now it do sound like i am pretty focussed about plate capture, but truth be told it dont bother me that much, even with hit and run on the rise here in DK, for the most i just rely on my cameras dokumenting i dont do anything stupid, and if i dont do that then my insurance and a court of law will be in my favor.
But offcourse traffic stuff rarely get into a court of law here, for the most the insurance companies work it out among them self.

PS. a trick you can use for plates is seeing them yourself and then call them out for the microfone of the camera to capture, this is highly usefull at night where its no way near possibel to capture a plate that is moving at more than a crawl.

Low light performance of dashcams is the #1 challenge, and most companies know this, but dont have the tech to deliver, at least not to a price a regular human can pay.

 

[kamkar]

And us Danes have it easy, we have pretty large plates with 2 letters and 5 numbers 120 x 504 and 72 mm tall leters thats 4-23/32 x 19-27/32 inch 2- 53/64 tall letters ( the standart rectangular plate )

 

[Rajagra]

Much of the vertical space of the view is often wasted (sky and your own car bonnet/hood.)
It would be nice if you could add on an external half-lens that changed the focal length and vertical direction of either the top or bottom of the image. That way you'd have a wide angle view for completeness and a longer angle view for detail like number plates.

For example, original wide-angle image:


And how it would look with my half-lens add-on:

 

[DT MI]

Much of the vertical space of the view is often wasted (sky and your own car bonnet/hood.)
It would be nice if you could add on an external half-lens that changed the focal length and vertical direction of either the top or bottom of the image. That way you'd have a wide angle view for completeness and a longer angle view for detail like number plates....

Actually that's not a bad idea, could possibly be implemented by the manufacturer as a single lens solution without a huge increase in cost. (Think in terms of bi-focal prescription glasses/spectacles.)

The only downside I can immediately see is the possibility of losing view of traffic lights if they are overhead as many in the U.S. are.

 

[jokiin]

Actually that's not a bad idea, could possibly be implemented by the manufacturer as a single lens solution without a huge increase in cost. (Think in terms of bi-focal prescription glasses/spectacles.)
.

the need to rotate the lens to focus would probably be the biggest problem, could really only be an add on and not a part of the lens assembly

 

[DT MI]

the need to rotate the lens to focus would probably be the biggest problem, could really only be an add on and not a part of the lens assembly

Any possibility of a sliding focus mechanism with a clamping type lock?

 

[jokiin]

Any possibility of a sliding focus mechanism with a clamping type lock?

physical size and hardware design would make that very hard to achieve I think, maybe could be done on a Korean camera where they're all big behemoths anyway, wouldn't look as out of place

 

[DT MI]

physical size and hardware design would make that very hard to achieve I think, maybe could be done on a Korean camera where they're all big behemoths anyway, wouldn't look as out of place

Make the design a 2 section lens assembly similar to the size/dimension of the current. One section being a threaded focus 'tube', the second being a rotating element that holds the lens and inserted into the front of the 'tube'. After focus is achieved and locked in place the section holding the lens could be rotated to the proper orientation and fixed in place with an adhesive. I'd be surprised if this could not be done keeping the dimensions nearly identical to the current lens assembly, at least based on what I've seen in various disassembly threads.

We can discuss royalties on the design at a later date.