Why don't more manufacturers use lens with F1.6 aperture?

reverend

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2014
Messages
5,715
Reaction score
4,105
Country
United Kingdom
Dash Cam
Too many
I've got a few dash cams over the last week now while trying to find out the best match for my needs, and I just wondered how come no manufacturer seems to be matching a good low light lens with the Ambarella A7 chips?

All of the A7 devices I've seen are using a lens with an aperture of 2.0. I've seen some newer devices mentioned on here which are the A7L with a different lens but that is an aperture of 2.5.

The GT680W I have is the Novatech / Aptina combo but that has an F1.6 lens?

I just wondered if there was another reason for this other than just cost as a lower aperture lens would help the A7 devices out with their low light performance?

Thanks in advance :)
 
Aperture isn't everything, there are better low light performers than Novatek that use much higher aperture, they have more processing power though than the 96650
 
Thanks guys - I was just thinking that the better the lens is that is put in front of the sensor the less complicated the job of the firmware would be?

I've just watched a few of those videos and the Panorama does look good at night - I'd seen the stats in that thread before I wrote this and did wonder that if a high quality lens was put in front of the Sony Exmor like say an f/1.6 or f/2.0 then you wouldn't need to do as much fancy work on the processor and it would look great in the day or night? I guess on the flip side though maybe the extra light on the Sony sensor would cause it to start clipping or blooming.

It's all crazy stuff and I'm still getting my head around all of this!

I need to check the EV settings on the GT680W as the videos it's taking are darker than the GS6000 - I need to do some proper night time driving to compare so tonight I'm staying away from the Stella :)
 
Thanks guys - I was just thinking that the better the lens is that is put in front of the sensor the less complicated the job of the firmware would be?

I've just watched a few of those videos and the Panorama does look good at night - I'd seen the stats in that thread before I wrote this and did wonder that if a high quality lens was put in front of the Sony Exmor like say an f/1.6 or f/2.0 then you wouldn't need to do as much fancy work on the processor and it would look great in the day or night? I guess on the flip side though maybe the extra light on the Sony sensor would cause it to start clipping or blooming.

It's all crazy stuff and I'm still getting my head around all of this!

I need to check the EV settings on the GT680W as the videos it's taking are darker than the GS6000 - I need to do some proper night time driving to compare so tonight I'm staying away from the Stella :)


It's not that simple as you think. In order to squeeze most out of video performance, need perfect combination / match of CMOS vs Lens Aperture. It is complex calculation. We see that most dashcams based on NT96650 + AR0330 uses lens F1.6 , F1.8 but still in most cases they are no match for higher class CMOS sensors where used lens with aperture F2.0 or up to F2.8 like in Panorama.
So it is wrong to think that larger aperture, means instantly better video performance, - NO! It's a perfect combination ( harmony ) of CMOS + Quality lens ( proper lens aperture for that CMOS ) + Firmware tune up + CPU.
 
The difference in the amount of light transmitted between a f1.6 and f2.0 lens is tiny. The difference in cost is not tiny. Also, the smaller the aperture the more fussy focus becomes (depth of field decreases), and no dash cam I'm aware of is capable of optical auto-focus.

Niko nailed it in his post above ^^^
 
Back
Top