Looking for a "dashcam" for my bicycle with good low-light performance

August 29, 2023 7:18 PM

I ride my bicycle through suburban streets at night and want to get cameras to put on my bike that will be able to clearly capture the licence plates of cars that are close to me. Any recommendations?

At some point someone is going to crash into me or try to run me off the road. I'd like to get some clear video so that my family has someone to sue. The main bike specific ones I've read about, the Garmin Varia 715 and Cycliq Fly models, don't seem to do very well at night. Even GoPros apparently aren't great at night either. I've never used any of these so can't say for myself. Are there other cameras I should look at? Is one of these 3 the best option?

My commute is around 45 minutes so I'd want something with at least 1 hour of battery life. Closer to 2 hours is better so that it can last long enough in the cold but I don't need something to record long rides.
I'm in Canada so it needs to operate in a temperature range of -15C to 35C .
It has to be waterproof or have a waterproof case.

posted by any portmanteau in a storm to Technology (2 answers total)

Here is a rundown of the issue for dashcams in general, and here for bicycle/helmetcams specifically. Here is a recent review of helmet cam models.

A GoPro Hero 7 (or higher) Black sounds like it would be a good solution for your use case . . . in the daytime. However I am not sure whether or not it will really work at night for license plates.

In fact, This 2023 review of the best dashcams finds the GoPro Hero 11 won't really capture license plates at night. However, he finds the Vantrue N4 Pro ($329) will do a pretty decent job of it. Also 2 or 3 of the other dashcam options do almost as well. The issue here would be, how will you mount, quickly remove and install (to prevent theft when parked), and power a dashcam on your bicycle. But if you can solve that part, these are the only options I have seen that will truly do a decent job of capturing U.S. license plates at night.

One addendum: the problem with GoPro (and most other similar cams) capturing license plates at night, is that the retroreflective material of the license plate overwhelms the camera sensor and so you get a pure white image of the plate with the numbers washed out.

So . . . it's just possible you that, if night-time license plate capture is your one and only priority, that you could tweak the night-time exposure settings of the GoPro to the point they are dim enough the license plates won't wash out. This would make night time imagery at other points around the image quite dark and probably far less than ideal. But you MIGHT be able to get the license plate itself to be more visible. I don't have a GoPro to try this on, but it is at least a possibility to explore.
posted by flug at 10:57 PM on August 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I figure the GoPro would take the best footage of any camera but I haven't been able to see sample videos of them on the road at night so I can see how good of a job they actually do. I recognize that it's a pretty tough use case because a rear-facing camera would need to deal with the bright light coming off a car's headlights and still be able to get a picture of its licence plate which is being lit only by streetlights. Apparently the GoPro12 that came out yesterday has an HDR mode which sounds like it could help but I'd like to see some footage first.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2023