5241E-Z12E Loosing Focus from Night to Day

[Captain_B]

I have 9 of these cameras used as spotter cams for the PTZ's and I noticed one of them about every 2 to 4 days will lose its focus when going from night to day time in the profile management schedule. In the camera, under Conditions, Focus & Zoom, I have Day set as "Semi-Auto" as well as Night, Any idea as to why? Thanks.

 

[wittaj]

Sounds like based on the amount of light when it goes from day to night is causing it to lose it's focus. There needs to be enough light for it to focus on something and I seem to recall from helping you out in other posts that you are in a rural setting, so it can be pretty dark. Sometimes the field of view of a particular camera can be problematic with focus at night. I have one that would struggle with a fire hydrant in the field of view and was having trouble deciding what to focus on.

You could try changing it to manual focus and physically set the focus and that "should" hold it for the next night if you are running the firmware that added that feature.

Or do one of the three things many of us do:

Either force it to change profile based on a schedule 45 minutes prior to sunset so that there is enough light for it to focus when it goes to night mode. This would mean you have to periodically go in and adjust.

Just run it in B/W 24/7.

Or use this program that will force a zoom/focus based on the numbers we set.

Dahua day/night switch utility - DahuaSunriseSunset

Revisiting this. Any chance an update can get the focus/zoom of the particular PTZ I'm using? (SD49225T-HN) But it should be pretty straightforward for you to find the API docs and send off the request yourself in a web browser to get the zoom/focus numbers.

ipcamtalk.com

 

[Captain_B]

Just watched the recording to see what it looks like outside when it switches from night to day and at night it is focused perfectly but then when it switched to the daytime it was too dark to see anything (pitch black). I changed the time to switch from night to day when it's daylight out. Thanks Wittaj, I think that was the problem.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, normally it is the going into night that is problematic, but a really cloudy morning when it kicks to daytime can sometimes cause some issues. One of these days Dahua will figure out how to get this working properly based on the available light LOL.

 

[Flintstone61]

Didn’t some other guy here use reflective tape strategically positioned on a curb or light post so the camera would focus on them? I wonder if it would be worth experimenting along those lines.