I swapped in LEDs for the license plate lights for all of five hours. Swapped in before going to work (4:30pm) and swapped them out when I got back home (9:10pm)
While there was still daylight out, I noticed the brighter light on the ground just behind the HR-V when backing up and when I used the side camera going forward... a hint of what’s to come.
Sure enough, at night, it actually became harder to see through the backup camera. Not much, but enough for me to notice.
You might wonder why, if the light is so bright... and it actually is because the light is too bright. The license plate and ground close to the HR-V return too much light, which causes the camera to dim everything else. Again, it isn’t much so, if you don’t back up often, you might not notice. But I do deliveries in the evening, so I end up backing up a lot to get out of parking and in/out driveways.
Its sort of the same that happens when there‘s an oncoming car at night. The headlights make the immediate surrounding seem darker and harder to see because your eyes/pupils narrow slightly to reduce the overall amount of light coming in, lest you go blind. Cameras do it to lower the exposure, I think.
That said, if your goal is to see the immediate foreground, close to the HR-V, then it’s fine, I suppose. But I want to see as much and as far back as possible, so this ends up being detrimental for me.
Luckily, the LED swap over a year ago for the actual backup light has helped.
