Dash Camera Recommendations

With the cinema or the 9000, can you turn the auto focus off? And how do they perform at night with lightning? I have the hd 5000 and it does decent during the day, but becomes almost worthless at night if its raining and lightning even with the auto focus off. Or at least I can't seem to make any settings that is usable.
 
as i pick up my new laptop hard drive tomorrow i am going to buy the microsoft lifecam cinema webcam. best buy has the camera for the same price as staples.

now my question is are you able to plug 2 cameras in and record 2 cameras at once with the software they give you? IE one dash mount and one side mount...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
James Hilger said:
With the cinema or the 9000, can you turn the auto focus off? And how do they perform at night with lightning? I have the hd 5000 and it does decent during the day, but becomes almost worthless at night if its raining and lightning even with the auto focus off. Or at least I can't seem to make any settings that is usable.
Click to expand...

Speaking for the 900, auto focus can be turned off by unchecking the auto focus box within the webcam software. Another option I like is the ability to turn the record LED off on the front of the camera to minimize the amount of attention drawn from other vehicles/bystanders.
 
James Hilger said:
With the cinema or the 9000, can you turn the auto focus off? And how do they perform at night with lightning? I have the hd 5000 and it does decent during the day, but becomes almost worthless at night if its raining and lightning even with the auto focus off. Or at least I can't seem to make any settings that is usable.
Click to expand...

Yes, both cams auto focus feature can be turned off by the included software control. I know that the Lifecam Cinema does an ok job at night time. Might have to change the settings a little bit in some situations to brighten it up
 
Skip, question about the EasyCAP link you provided.

I'm looking to stream this year as well, but was really curious if the EasyCAP worked as well as the 40-50 dollar alternative from StarTech.

Just interested to get the opinion of someone who's used one out in the field.
 
I can't say about the StarTech since I never used it. The EasyCap is cheap Chinese hardware. It works well once you get the right drivers for it, which are impossible to find. I had help getting them from some people. Then you have to configure it properly as it defaults to PAL instead of NTSC. Now that I've got it setup though it doesn't get me too much grief. Although I suspect it might be at fault for the blue screens I get occasionally when plugging in my GPS/camera hardware (some sort of hardware conflict) and my WebCamMax feed will often freeze after a minute of use until I restart it (might be a WebCamMax) problem. So I guess now that I rattle off all these issues they don't sound so good, lol. However, they are ridiculously cheap and they do work well for many people once they are setup properly.
 
Dan Robinson said:
Does the Lifecam have any ability to zoom?
Click to expand...

The Lifecam's ability to zoom sucks!!! It can only do 4x and it's image capture is wide field. Pretty much that is the Lifecam's only, or at least primary weakness. It is for a webcam not a field camcorder so it isn't designed for much zoom. That said, it is easy to use and has very nice color / resolution depending of course on bandwidth available. This of course is not so much a problem if you get very close < 1 mile, or maybe 2 to a tornado. It is one of several options I have. I still haven't found an overall Great solution.

Anyone find a cam like the Lifecam with great zoom capability 20x, 40x, 150x, etc let me know.
 
Is the Lifecam zoom digital or optical? Thinking it wouldn't matter for streaming since the output for that is low-res.

For now I'm just planning to use my $20 640x480 webcam. With revenue way down, I just can't bring myself to spend my own out-of-pocket money to improve quality for the entertainment of viewers! Already bleeding money away for gas to chase at all. Seems like if more quality is desired on the end user side, maybe a pay-per-view model would be in order? Economics 101, economics 101....subject for another thread.
 
Last night I hooked up my new Logitech Pro 9000 and it seems to be just the ticket. No problem with the zoom that I can see, although as has been pointed out, it's controlled via the laptop. Easy as pie to mount on the dash using industrial Velcro--no need to mess with a mount; just slap it on when using and remove it in a heartbeat when not. Thanks to my lady, Lisa, for that great idea! Now I just need to see how zoom and imaging work in actual application instead of in my living room.
 
For those looking to use EasyCap, I purchased one of the cheap knockoffs on Amazon and it worked out of the box, defaulted to NTSC but there were horizontal lines all throughout the video and I was unable to get them to go away. I then purchased a real EzCap (http://www.ezcap.tv/ ) and it works like a charm.
 
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