[sperry]

For my in-car, I use manual exposure and manual focus settings so I can explicitly set the aperture on the camera. Every camcorder I've had has a spot focus and spot exposure function (the Sony's are really nice since it's just a matter of touching on the screen what you want to focus on). You just have to set it up before you get in the car.

What sucks is that many cameras will reset their settings between power cycles, so you have to leave the camera on all day or keep resetting the exposure before each run. I ended up putting an inverter in the car so the camera's plugged in and not running off the battery so I can leave it on all day long and only worry about setting it up once in the morning.