What camera?

[DrSquirrel]

Are their any military grade headcams that can do night vision for when it is dark dark giving high quality footage for a half decent price?
I recently got a Contour HD but have yet to try it in poor light or at night. Day time it is brilliant, a real step up from the Muvi (genuine version). Number plates are so easy to read. But it still needs an 8 or 16GB MicroSDHC card and a spare battery to get several hours of high quality footage. I was surprised at how good my Muvi was at night in lit urban areas but disappointed it couldn't clearly show number plates. I am hoping the Contour will be a whole lot better.

To take the night vision seriously...

Image intensifiers would fail at any other light source (cars).
IR would require an IR light and then it would only really look like a regular light in the dark... does have the advantage of being able to use much brighter IR sources though without the worry about blinding others - obviously you would still need a regulary light so others can see you.

 

[gaz]

There have been diacusions about using an IR light with the contourhd for night recording, vholdr don't think it will work as expected and I haven't seen any results of eople trying.

 

[DrSquirrel]

There have been diacusions about using an IR light with the contourhd for night recording, vholdr don't think it will work as expected and I haven't seen any results of eople trying.

Lend me your camera and I will find out for you


Though I agree - it probably wouldn't work that well.

 

[gaz]

Lend me your camera and I will find out for you

Haha!

 

[DrSquirrel]

Haha!

I NOES WHAT YOU SEDS

---------------------------------- ------------ QUOTE ---------- Lend me your camera and I will find out for you Though I agree - it probably wouldn't work that well. ----------------------------- Sure, pm me your address ----------------------------------

 

[BSRU]

You need light from a filament bulb, such as halogen, to help the Contour record in the dark.

 

[magnatom]

I have some footage from my camera (an HQ2 from dogcam sports) which was from unlit country lanes, with my two lights. The HQ2 is designed with low light in mind, so I'll let you have a look at that when I get a chance to upload it.

 

[HLaB]

just read an earlier suggestion of the atc2k.I used to have one.I wouldnt recommend it now a days. maybe the 5k, or new 9k would be good tho! more expensive mind.

I don't know about the 9k but I've got the 5k and wouldn't recommend it either. Its pretty bomb proof and takes AA's (rechargeables last longer than the max 4gb card, 2 hours approx) but that all that really got positive. Its quality is pretty poor, its even worse in low light or varied light. Its microphone is very poor too. IMO its way too big to be helmet mounted so mines bar mounted which probably makes the quality and sound worse.

Another one which I certainly wouldn't reccomend it the AT1, nice concept and its cheap (£65 iirc) but that's all its got going for it; its quality is pretty poor, its battery life is terrible (takes a flat ni-mh batterry in the recorder and a built in rechargeable battery in the camera), it suffers baddly at time from interference and the video files tend to become unreadable and inorder to view them you have to go through a lengthy (timewise) conversion process. Its got a slightly better mic than the 5k but not that good (the latter video is NSFW )

 

[BSRU]

I have some footage from my camera (an HQ2 from dogcam sports) which was from unlit country lanes, with my two lights. The HQ2 is designed with low light in mind, so I'll let you have a look at that when I get a chance to upload it.

I watched some night footage of a Sony CCD bullet camera on YouTube, looked good apart from flare even from road signs. I would image a decent CCD will be considerabley better than a Contour. I have noticed the Contour does not cope very well with images just before sunrise, not dark enough for halogens to have any benefit and too dark for the Contour to cope with.

 

[gaz]

You need light from a filament bulb, such as halogen, to help the Contour record in the dark.

How much for such a set up?

 

[g00se]

I've got one of the muvi /MD80 clones from ebay £15. They're often referred to as an MD80 but the 'real' MD80 is just an unbranded muvi that you can get in places like Maplins. the 'real ones' are metal with switches, the cheap Chinese copies are plastic with buttons.

It works great for me and will do an hour on one charge.

Some issues though...

1. Compared to the real Muvi/MD80, files sizes are larger and you'll get less time of similar sized cards.

2. Get a class 6 microSD card for best quality recordings.

3. The real ones are OKish in the dark, the clones are quite bad. If you're stationary under lighting it's OK, but quite blurry if you're moving.

4. Use a decent USB cable, otherwise charging the clone gets worse over time. I've use a decent one and don't have issues with the battery degrading (I've had the clone for a year now).

 

[DrSquirrel]

How much for such a set up?

There is a halogen 5w+10w setup going for around £60 mark atm, battery is nimh so pretty heavy (uses a bottle battery basically). Also lumens per watt is low, but if you really want halogen its a good setup and you can swap them out for 20w as they use standard household halogen bulbs (at expense of capacity of course).

2. Get a class 6 microSD card for best quality recordings.

Class 6 is overkill, Class 4 will be perfectly fine - Class 2 only just fails to keep up.

I watched some night footage of a Sony CCD bullet camera on YouTube, looked good apart from flare even from road signs. I would image a decent CCD will be considerabley better than a Contour. I have noticed the Contour does not cope very well with images just before sunrise, not dark enough for halogens to have any benefit and too dark for the Contour to cope with.

Don't believe Sony that CCD is always better than CMOS.

Any camera is going to struggle with bright/dark mixed situations...

 

[thomas]

Class 6 is overkill, Class 4 will be perfectly fine - Class 2 only just fails to keep up.

The price difference is minimal, and no doubt people will upgrade and want a higher class in the future. I've got class 6...mainly because I when the free one didn't work, I didn't want to risk a class 4 not being good enough and having to spend ages waiting for a class 6 to come

 

[HLaB]

OT, is there an easy way to tell the class of an existing card. Its clearly labelled on one of my cards but not on the rest

 

[BSRU]

How much for such a set up?

You can buy a complete Electron setup, 10w spot and 5w flood for £50, uses a fairly heavy bottle battery. In the YouTube video I shot at night, I used a 6v 15w halogen spot light, to extend the burn time I decided to modify mine in order to use 12v halogens, cheap and more powerful bulbs available.

I use a 20w flood on the handle bar and a 20w spot on my helmet. It is £10 for a pair of Electron headlamps, then a couple of pounds for two extension cables and then £26 for one 12v 9800mAh Li-ion battery from Hong Kong, fully charged it should last over 5 hours, good for 3 to 4 days for on my commute, you need one battery for each 20w bulb. I also purchased a Li-ion smart charger as the one supplied took ages to charge the battery.