[bacampbe]

I notice that the reverse and PDC cameras on our new m340i are really dark at night. When trying to reverse out of the garage with a car on the other side of the driveway, that car is completely invisible on the display. It's as if the reverse and side lights don't illuminate much at all.
Along those lines, when coming into the garage at night the headlights do not seem to illuminate the forward camera view much.

I've tried turning up the brightness, but it seems to have very little effect at night.

This was not at all the case on our old 328i or my current m240i vert. Is there some adjustment other than brightness and contrast that can make this better?

[DomiGijzen]

Are the camera lenses clean? In my case, I have a clearview at night. Also the backup lights help in a normal way.

[bacampbe]

Originally Posted by DomiGijzen

Are the camera lenses clean? In my case, I have a clearview at night. Also the backup lights help in a normal way.

I will check, but it doesn't have the foggy look of a dirty lens. It looks more like the exposure is turned down low.

[RedKloud]

Originally Posted by bacampbe

I notice that the reverse and PDC cameras on our new m340i are really dark at night. When trying to reverse out of the garage with a car on the other side of the driveway, that car is completely invisible on the display. It's as if the reverse and side lights don't illuminate much at all.
Along those lines, when coming into the garage at night the headlights do not seem to illuminate the forward camera view much.

I've tried turning up the brightness, but it seems to have very little effect at night.

This was not at all the case on our old 328i or my current m240i vert. Is there some adjustment other than brightness and contrast that can make this better?

+1. Way too dark, even in the parking garage at my workplace.

[RSnic]

+1
When ever I back up at night, it is always a challenge. Best I can figure is that the back up LEDs aren't bright enough

[Sling56]

I have found this as well, very different from any other car I've had. Camera is almost useless at night, I've cranked the brightness as well

[TigerOne]

Originally Posted by bacampbe

I notice that the reverse and PDC cameras on our new m340i are really dark at night. When trying to reverse out of the garage with a car on the other side of the driveway, that car is completely invisible on the display. It's as if the reverse and side lights don't illuminate much at all.
Along those lines, when coming into the garage at night the headlights do not seem to illuminate the forward camera view much.

I've tried turning up the brightness, but it seems to have very little effect at night.

This was not at all the case on our old 328i or my current m240i vert. Is there some adjustment other than brightness and contrast that can make this better?

Agreed. I do not believe it is a LED brightness issue or an screen brightness issue.....it is a matter of the exposure setting for the camera sensor. This could be adjusted via software update or by giving users control over the exposure / gamma.

[bacampbe]

Originally Posted by TigerOne

Agreed. I do not believe it is a LED brightness issue or an screen brightness issue.....it is a matter of the exposure setting for the camera sensor. This could be adjusted via software update or by giving users control over the exposure / gamma.

I agree it looks like an exposure setting problem. It's dark, but has pretty saturated colors. Under similar lighting conditions my m240 looks washed out, but you can see things. I wonder if someone made a decision to make it prettier, and lost function in the process.

What is the best way to give feedback to BMW on this sort of thing, in the hopes they fix it in a future software update?

[TigerOne]

Originally Posted by bacampbe

I agree it looks like an exposure setting problem. It's dark, but has pretty saturated colors. Under similar lighting conditions my m240 looks washed out, but you can see things. I wonder if someone made a decision to make it prettier, and lost function in the process.

What is the best way to give feedback to BMW on this sort of thing, in the hopes they fix it in a future software update?

Wish I knew. I mentioned this to my sales guy and I sent an email to the generic customer service email address in Canada. All I received back was a suggestion on how to adjust screen brightness, which was not the point. If you ever do find a means of getting constructive feedback to the firmware developers, please share in here.....we'd probably all like a shot at making some good changes. For example, I would also like to be able to select a bias for the brightness of the instrument screen. It is automatically adjusted using a sensor during the daytime, but there is no way to manually adjust the centrepoint of that brightness. When I brought up this point with BMW, they told me how to adjust brightness at night using the rotary dimming switch, which again was not the point since that does not appear to do anything to affect screen brightness in the daytime.

Front line customer service folks do the best they can, but they will likely not be as tuned into the subtleties of using the systems as the engineers are, which is why the only answers they provide are straight out of a users manual that we already have.

[Hysnbrg]

Do you guys have Alpine White cars by any chance? Coz I do.

I notice this issue a lot more when my car is freshly washed and shiny. I think it's something to do with the contrast of the white bumper that takes up a good chunk of the rear view camera view. Sort of what a phone camera runs into without HDR with both bright and dark objects in the view.

I read somewhere that putting a small piece of black vinyl tape on the lower part of the rear view camera to block some of the bumper appearing can solve this problem.

Can't find source, didn't try it, and it's not as much a problem for me now that I don't wash the car every week like I used. I daily drive it

[bacampbe]

Originally Posted by Hysnbrg

Do you guys have Alpine White cars by any chance? Coz I do.

I notice this issue a lot more when my car is freshly washed and shiny. I think it's something to do with the contrast of the white bumper that takes up a good chunk of the rear view camera view. Sort of what a phone camera runs into without HDR with both bright and dark objects in the view.

I read somewhere that putting a small piece of black vinyl tape on the lower part of the rear view camera to block some of the bumper appearing can solve this problem.

Can't find source, didn't try it, and it's not as much a problem for me now that I don't wash the car every week like I used. I daily drive it

No, Portomao Blue here.

[RSnic]

No, my car is Tanzanite blue

[gnolivos]

Same problem here. My f30 backup camera worked very well at night.
My old Honda CR-V actually triggers infrared camera at night which is even better (even if not pretty).

Bmw dropped the ball here. They better fix this cause I can’t see a darn thing backing up at night in about half the situations so far.

[Andy3661]

Originally Posted by gnolivos

Same problem here. My f30 backup camera worked very well at night.
My old Honda CR-V actually triggers infrared camera at night which is even better (even if not pretty).

Bmw dropped the ball here. They better fix this cause I can’t see a darn thing backing up at night in about half the situations so far.

Maybe there is some underlying fault with the camera but how bad is it, can you post a pic so we can compare to ours?

Mine seems to have gone worse overtime so wonder is the infrared LED are deteriorating or failing.

[gnolivos]

Originally Posted by Andy3661

Maybe there is some underlying fault with the camera but how bad is it, can you post a pic so we can compare to ours?

Mine seems to have gone worse overtime so wonder is the infrared LED are deteriorating or failing.

Infrared you say? I'm not even seeing an infrared kicking in at night. It's full color for one. And it's very hard to see anything.

[Andy3661]

Originally Posted by gnolivos

Infrared you say? I'm not even seeing an infrared kicking in at night. It's full color for one. And it's very hard to see anything.

Well I'm assuming there is some LED omitting light so it can see in the dark. If not then no wonder it's poor as it's using your reverse lights etc and if they are not clean then won't be enough to provide enough light for the camera.

Saying that in the rain all 4 of my cameras are poor to the point I can't see a parking space lines!

[A6bullet]

Damn, ok it thought it was just me. Yeah at night the camera is really useless, which I hate coming out of garages. There's has to be a solution

[Andy3661]

I keep getting a issue where it goes blue, only intermittently at this stage.

[rodc271]

Does everyone with the issue have the 360° cameras?
I had a loan G20 recently with a single rear reverse camera and no issues at night, very bright and clear.
My G20 with 4 x cameras is atrocious at night.

[Unbuckled2579]

It's crazy, I was really hoping this would be solved by software at some point or at least that you could use bimmercode or something to adjust it.

The backup camera on my 2023 M340i is just too fucking dark. I had a loaner Mercedes a little while ago and that's when I realized how shit my backup camera was compared to something that actually works.