You need to identify the areas you want to cover and pick a camera designed to cover that distance. In some instances, it may be a 2MP or 4MP that is the right camera. Unless you go to a PTZ, a 4K camera to get clean IDENTIFY captures at a distance is not on the market yet...
So after you decide if you want IDENTIFY ability or OBSERVE/RECOGNIZE ability, then you get the appropriate camera.
To identify someone with the wide-angle 2.8mm lens that most people opt for, someone would have to be within 13 feet of the camera, but realistically within 10 feet after you dial it in to your settings. You don't want all or most of that distance lost in vertical distance.
Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well. These cameras meet all your requirements.
- 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera
- 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
- 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
- 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
- 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
- 49225 PTZ - great auto-track PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.
You need to get the correct camera for the area trying to be covered. A wide angle 2.8mm to IDENTIFY someone 40 feet away is the wrong camera regardless of how good the camera is. A 2.8mm camera to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet is a good choice OR it is an overview camera to see something happened but not be able to identify who.
One camera cannot be the be all, see all. Each one is selected for covering a specific area. Most of us here have different brands and types, from fixed cams, to varifocals, to PTZs, each one selected for it's primary purpose and to utilize the strength of that particular camera.
So you will need to identify the distance the camera would be from the activities you want to
IDENTIFY on and purchase the correct camera for that distance as an
optical zoom.
If you want to see things far away, you need optical zoom, digital zoom only works in the movies and TV...And the optical zoom is done real time - for a varifocal it is a set it and forget it. You cannot go to recorded video and optically zoom in later, at that point it is digital zoom, and the sensors on these cameras are so small which is why digital zoom doesn't work very well after the fact.
