B52IR-Z12E out of focus 10 seconds after switching over to Night

J

JPmedia

Getting comfortable
Sep 11, 2024
714
535
Southeast
This is an odd one - never happened before. My west facing B52IR LPR cam normally switches over at 19:45 and it's set for the evening. But last night it apparently had issue with focus after it switched over to night. I didn't notice the issue until I checked my notifications later in the evening that it was out of focus. I checked the playback this morning and 10 seconds after it switched to night, it started hunting for focus and it just stopped at an out of focus setting a second or two after.

Now we did have a thunderstorm around the same time, but I can't see that causing an issue as the lightning wasn't that close. Closest lightning was 12 miles away. We've had storms before that were closer and didn't cause an issue.

After nudging the focus on the LPR west cam a click this morning after dawn, it went back into focus by itself. Really strange
 
^^^
Yup

And I've learned over the years to make the switch to Night /B&W well ahead of sunset. Like a full hour before to give the camera enough light to get that IR focus
 
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bigredfish said:
^^^
Yup

And I've learned over the years to make the switch to Night /B&W well ahead of sunset. Like a full hour before to give the camera enough light to get that IR focus
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I have followed this advice from day one, since I found out the focus is usually different between night and day - no issues, until yesterday evening. For some reason when it switched to night, it auto focused just fine and then 10 seconds after that, it went out of focus and stayed there. Very strange. Guess we'll see if it happens again tonight
 
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It may have just needed to have its handle jiggled. I have some cams that get stuck in color or B/W, for no reason. A switch from Night/Day or Day/Night usually will fix it.
 
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Ri22o said:
Some will run their LPR in full time B/W for this reason.
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While it may be a safe way for some to use it, I find that the B&W setting can have an issue with certain colors of plates during the day, especially on low contrast plates
 
alekk said:
Ditto what @Ri22o said ... I've seen the focus point shift on a varifocal on a "tough" test - fully zoomed in on close object, so depth-of-field is minimal.
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This is definitely an isolated incident. I have been running this camera since last year with the same settings with very little issues. It could be a fluke, or it could be the environment in which it took place since we were having a thunderstorm at the time.

I'll watch the camera when the switch-over takes place tonight
 
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Well, switchover as normal. No funny business like yesterday and we're 4 minutes into night setting. Maybe a fluke or weather
 
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