Category Archives: Camera investigations
Austinmer shoe box with polycarbonate divider soffit.
Silk cone interior view and exterior detail
Austinmer box 1 – split screen
Found box with bubble wrap floor and open roof filmed in Austinmer, NSW, Australia, using two Firefly 8S (90º FOV) cameras positioned side-by-side, using time-lapse recording at 1 frame every 2 seconds. Continue reading
Fruit Cartons – Perth Verandah Roof
Low light camera tests
In order to test which cameras performed best in low light, I set up five cameras simultaneously recording, for several days. I started the recording at night, so as to pick up dawn the following day.

Yi Action | Elephone REXSO | Firefly Q6 | iShare | Firefly 8S
Elephone ELE Explorer Pro ‘4K’ – test 2
Elephone ELE Explorer Pro ‘4K’ camera filming cardboard box with packing material roof.
Firefly Q6
The Firefly Q6 has the same sensor (Sony IMX078) and processor (Novatek 96660) as the Firefly 7S, but with a different form factor. I was interested to see how this shape of camera might work with filming models.
Lens image circle size
Further research on camera lenses and image quality indicated that another detail of the lens specification was relevant – the “lens image circle” needs to be slightly larger than the sensor diagonal to avoid dark corners in the image.
Click to access Application%20Note%20Image%20Circle%20Tolerance%20copy.pdf
I am therefore noting the sensor size in my Action Camera Comparison Chart, to ensure that any new lens has a sufficient image circle for the sensor.
M12 Lenses
As the options for cameras with non-wide angle lenses is very limited, and as the lenses on the action cameras are completely removable once they have been released from their fixed focus, I decided to look for replacement lenses, rather than entire cameras with narrower fields of view. The lenses for action cameras, FPV drone cameras, and many CCTV cameras generally use the M12 thread size.