I searched but didn’t see this mentioned here before. I’ve had my v4 camera for awhile and it’s great at night in low light conditions until something like car headlights appear then that area is completely washed out. Makes the camera pretty much useless to help ID the car for example. I use a V2 camera next to the V4 to be able to see what the V4 misses. I guess the V4 is working correctly and it’s difficult to have both low light and bright light exposure settings?
For a $20 to $40 camera, I wouldn’t expect any improvement.
Correct on the V4. Good workaround using the V2 in addition to the V4. Give a good use for those old V2 cameras that we upgraded to newer models.
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It’s because of the color night vision. I have an old V2 camera set up just to watch fireworks. V3s and later models with color night vision ruin the image.
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Yeah as you suspect, the “starlight sensor” needs time to adjust/reduce exposure when lighting changes, so brief changes in light will throw it off. Guess that’s the tradeoff. My OGs handle it fairly well but it depends how extreme the change is. The lower resolution sensor doesn’t have to over-expose as much to get enough light so that reduces the effect a bit.
You could try turning on night mode and see if that works any better for your purposes, it will still get washed out with a direct hit of light but it seems to recover quicker. Then there’s placement, putting it up higher will help keep headlights from a direct hit.
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Thanks for all of the comments. As I thought, it’s working as designed. The low light feature is very nice, especially during full moon. During that time the images look like daytime! The trade off any area of bright light will max out the sensor and lose all details. Sounds like my solution of using a V2 and and a V4 is about the best that can be done. Thanks again to all who commented.
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V4 doesn’t like headlights, makes it blink it’s 
This is not unique to low end cameras. I have worked as a live video engineer (the guy who makes all the cameras on a shoot look the same) using $$$$$ professional cameras. Same issue with a dark scene and all of a sudden a bright light comes on - and we were mostly using manual iris (light level control).
Damn physics getting in the way of what you think you want…
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True. If I am in the dark and someone flashes a light in my eyes I either blink or vision goes all white. Funny thing physics. 
Honestly though, not bad haha
Damn physics With a background in photography I understand the issue. I was just hoping for some manual exposure/aperture settings to adjust to the area of bright light. 
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