Review- EmpireTech IPC-T58IR-SE S3 2.8mm 4k fixed lens

Thanks to @EMPIRETECANDY we have another cam to check out.

It can be obtained HERE or HERE

8MP IR Fixed-focal Eyeball Network Camera

• 8-MP 1/1.8" CMOS image sensor, low luminance, and high definition image.
• Outputs max. 8 MP (3840×2160) @25/30fps.
• Built-in IR LED, and the max. illumination distance is 50 m.
• ROI, SVC, SMART H.264+/H.265+, AI H.264/H.265, encoding after filter, flexible coding, applicable to various bandwidth and storage environments.
• Rotation mode, WDR, 3D NR, HLC, BLC, digital watermarking, applicable to various monitoring scenes.
• With deep learning algorithm, it supports: video metadata, smart sound detection, IVS, face detection, smart object detection, and people counting, etc.
• Alarm: 1 in, 1 out; audio: 1 in, 1 out; supports max. 512 GB Micro SD card, built-in MIC.
• 12 VDC/PoE power supply; ePoE.
• IP67 protection.
• SMD 3.0.

See more specs HERE.

You can compare this camera to the 4mp version I reviewed HERE.

Settings: h264h, CBR, 14336 bitrate, 15fps, iframe 15.



Firmware: V3.100.0000000.5.R, Build Date: 2023-05-09

Be sure to select 4k in YT player.

Does it have both a built-in microphone AND external audio input as the specs seem to say? Does the GUI let you select which to use?

Thanks looney!

Just a quick compare eyeballing night shot on an iPhone, both set at 1/120 or close, they seem to be damn near equal in light pickup. (Comparing the light on the house and yard across the street)
That’s surprising

I’ll look closer on the laptop but very interesting

Well close, but the 4MP wins slightly at night, though not a perfect comparison.
By the same token, the 4K wins during the day

tigerwillow1 said:

Does it have both a built-in microphone AND external audio input as the specs seem to say? Does the GUI let you select which to use?

Click to expand...

Yes it has mic and audio input/output

Hi Looney,

Is it possible to force colour at night so we can see how good / bad it is without IR and only a little supplementary light?

Does it have a built in speaker?

@CCTVCam looney's place is bit dark, i think full color will not work From his review the 4K new one can work bit good at low light place.
It has only build in mic, there is no speaker.

tigerwillow1 said:

Does it have both a built-in microphone AND external audio input as the specs seem to say? Does the GUI let you select which to use?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Seems there's a lack of cameras with speakers and a lack of good aftermarket speakers espeically at a cheap price. Most aftermarket speakers seem either poor construction or nearly as much as the camera! Pity.

CCTVCam said:

Hi Looney,

Is it possible to force colour at night so we can see how good / bad it is without IR and only a little supplementary light?

Does it have a built in speaker?

Click to expand...

I'll give it a try, but I doubt the results will wow.

It does look quite dark on your drive now. Didn't you use to have a lamp in front of the car?

Loony, have you used digital zoom in BI for this 8MP camera and compared it to the 4MP 5442 series, when looking at far distances? Does it look like it was approx 2X better resolution when zoomed?

CCTVCam said:

It does look quite dark on your drive now. Didn't you use to have a lamp in front of the car?

Click to expand...

Lamp is still there, it's just not in the FOV in this setup.

Oneup said:

Loony, have you used digital zoom in BI for this 8MP camera and compared it to the 4MP 5442 series, when looking at far distances? Does it look like it was approx 2X better resolution when zoomed?

Click to expand...

Yes.

From my using experience the new 4K low light capacity is almost same as the 4mp S2 version. So will be good if some guys want 4K cameras.

I've been looking at the specs, whilst the only way will be to see a comparison with the 4kt under simialr lighting, it's not far off in claimed ability:

4kt - Colour - Min Illumination - 0.0005 lux
581 - Colour - Min Illumination - 0.0008 lux

So on paper there's just 0.0003 lux difference between the two. Surely that can't be that much difference? It's 50% greater requirement but we're talking ten thousands of a lux so 3 ten thousandths of a lux unless this is in some way logarythmic.

They even seem to be claimed at their different apertures - 4kt @ f1.0 and 581 @ f1.6. There must be some processing trickey going on to improve the low light that much on the smaller chip.

Thoughts?

Anyone tests in forced colour?

CCTVCam said:

So on paper there's just 0.0003 lux difference between the two. Surely that can't be that much difference? It's 50% greater requirement but we're talking ten thousands of a lux so 3 ten thousandths of a lux unless this is in some way logarythmic.

Click to expand...

Light exposure for photographic imaging works logarithmically, using base two.

For photographic imaging, typical relative exposures are expressed in terms of 'f-stops'. Where a difference of one f-stop corresponds to twice-as-much, or half-as-much light.

The typical dimensions for computing exposure are lens aperture/iris size for the light to pass through, the duration of the exposure (i.e. exposure time, the reciprocal of what is often called "shutter speed", and the light sensitivity of the imager or film.

An imager that is twice as sensitive as another effectively buys you an additional f-stop of exposure flexibility.

So other things equal: same aperture size, same exposure duration, an imager that is twice-as-sensitive can be really useful. Sometimes a high-sensitivity imager is simply necessary to make an exposure viable at all, and it is really useful to enable lower-duration exposures (i.e. better ability to freeze motion in an image).

Thanks Herp but f-stop is not really what I'm comparing. The lux values are what I was looking at and on the face of it there's 3 ten thousands of a lux difference in repsonsiveness. I can't see that making much of a difference but I'm open to being proven wrong.

I raised the very close lux spec issue between 541R and 581R in a different thread, and wittaj pointed out he had already done a real world comparison, and the difference was more than one would expect from comparing the specs.

Yeah the difference between the two 5X1IR cameras is just 0.0001 lux on paper from memory. I wonder how this works?

CCTVCam said:

Yeah the difference between the two 5X1IR cameras is just 0.0001 lux on paper from memory. I wonder how this works?

Click to expand...

As @tigerwillow1 pointed out, I reviewed and showed this difference in this post

What I mentioned and compared images was:

Regarding minimum illumination (LUX rating), many do not pay attention to the minimum illumination specs...because those are under ideal situations with so many factors not known.

Almost every camera will say 0 LUX with infrared or white LED on, and we all know how poorly Reolinks perform at night in low light yet that is their spec....or even two different good cameras. Take for example the 5442 4MP2.8mm fixed lens camera will beat the socks off the 5241 2MP 2.8mm fixed lens or a Reolink and they both say 0 Lux with IR on.

Heck darn near every camera will say 0 LUX with IR on....

Once upon a time manufacturers would at least say at what shutter speed that rating was based on. Most would say a 1/3 shutter. That is way to slow for anything. You need to run minimum 1/60 shutter to start to minimize blur.

But now they don't even provide that, so in most cases it is a wide open iris, slowest shutter the camera allows, and gain and brightness cranked to 100 so that they can get the lowest illumination number possible.

But nobody would run the camera in that configuration.

Some of the older cameras would give these kind of specs so you knew how the camera was setup to come up with the minimum illumination.

0.002Lux/F1.5 ( Color,1/3s,30IRE)
0.020Lux/F1.5 ( Color,1/30s,30IRE)
0Lux/F1.5 (IR on)

So of course, the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed, and thus the LUX needed is more. It would be nice if they still provided it in this manner.

To minimize blur with motion, you need to run a shutter at at least 1/60 shutter - once you start doing that, the LUX specs are out the window.

But as more competition came out, manufacturers started playing games and tweaking the settings for getting the lowest lux possible, but that came at a cost of a configuration nobody would use. So they wouldn't say how the camera was configured to capture that minimum illumination rating.

They play these marketing games to make it look like the camera is better than it is for someone that is just chasing minimum illumination numbers. Kind of like how we rarely get the miles per gallon a car is rated for.

It is a tool, but I would prefer to see the reviews here with settings provided and make an educated guess as to if my light is more or less than the reviewer.

The same here with these two cameras. On paper the LUX ratings are basically the same, yet performance in real life testing is very different.

If I run both of these on auto settings, then yeah the static image will look about the same brightness and the 8MP will provide better detail and digital zoom, but motion would be a hot mess for both of them. It isn't until you start adjusting cameras to minimize blur that you find out how they really perform with little light.