Taking pictures with a camera requires light. A camera basically works the same way as the human eye, and the degree of exposure largely determines how much you can see. Therefore, in the dark, recordings are a lot less clear than during the day and it is not so easy to change this.

Tools

When thinking of Night vision, many people think of the greyish recordings in Temptation Island bedrooms or the green recordings sometimes made by the military. These Night vision recordings are made with cameras with infrared illumination or with special thermal imaging cameras. These cameras often cost thousands of euros and the technology is therefore not very suitable for in-car filming. Many people are therefore initially disappointed when we tell them that dashcams do not support this form of Night vision.

Night vision in dashcams

The quality of the images a dashcam takes in the dark depends largely on the image sensor used . The image sensor is the component in the camera where light enters, after which it can be processed by the processor. This sounds simple, but far from all image sensors are capable of taking good shots in the dark. Currently the best image sensors for in the dark are the Sony Starvis sensors. Dashcams with these image sensors are therefore rated ‘Excellent’ in our specifications, followed by ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’, ‘Average’ and ‘Moderate’ for dashcams with other image sensors and thus performance.

Infrared in dashcams

There are dashcams with infrared LEDs, such as many Taxi dashcams. These infrared LEDs are especially effective at short distances of up to a few metres. In Taxi dashcams, these are therefore usually on the interior camera, and in those from MACH Truck on the cameras filming the blind spot. Those who think they can use them - like Big Brother - to film their neighbour's bedroom at night will be disappointed.