Camera placement

[namtrab]

This is an image of my front porch as seen by my Ring doorbell cam. The porch area is roughly 5' wide and roughly 6' deep (deep being door to archway). Now, we like our Ring for what it is. But, I am going to be installing a Dahua cam in the porch area. My question is, how would you place the cam (a couple schools of thought, here)? Should I go ahead and place the Dahua above the door, so I have a nice frontal shot of anyone approaching the door? Or, since I already have a Ring taking a frontal shot (albeit, quality is OK at best), would I be better served to place the Dahua above the archway facing towards the door?

Above the door would give a much better shot of anyone approaching, but the Ring already has this angle. Over the archway towards the door would make the Ring the cam to catch the approach angle, but would give me 2 different angles of this area, and would also give a better view of exactly what someone is doing at the door (try to operate the handle? Just leaving a flyer in the door? etc). Over the door gives me essentially the same angle on 2 cams, with the Dahua giving a much better quality shot. Over the archway gives me 2 angles, a view of specific activity at the door, but makes the Ring (with lower quality) the frontal approach shot.

As far as placing it over the door so it can see some action in the front yard area (albeit a limited view), that area will already be covered by a different cam. I just want to cover the porch area.

Yes, I know. I could alleviate all of this and just put a Dahua above the door AND over the archway! Wifey might find that...excessive.

 

[bigredfish]

I'd like to see a short video clip of the Ring and see how far back you get good facial recognition... if ok, maybe the Dahua looking at the door and the two camera angles makes some sense..

 

[randytsuch]

Are you recording the ring video?
One reason I won't get a ring is that I can't record to my Blue Iris setup, I would need to use their cloud recording.

Also, I'm not sure how useful the 2nd camera position would be, might just get the backs of peoples heads. I guess you would get them as they leave.

BTW, my standard answer is to get one camera for this type of question is get one camera, mount it on a 2x4, and put it where you are considering mounting. See how it looks during the day, and at night.

 

[namtrab]

Actually, I just ruled out the 2nd placement. I was outside looking and thinking, and if I place a cam above the arch, it will have the porchlight right in its view. Not good. So, I'll just place it above the door as planned. I already had a cam there at one time (Arlo Pro), and the angle was just fine for me.

Yes, we do the cloud recording on Ring (sucks that you can't record to your own PC/NAS/etc). But, it was a W.W.I. purchase (no...not World War One...Wife Wanted It). It is actually pretty handy for now, but once a decent cam is up, we won't need the cloud recording anymore. We get a lot of stuff delivered to our home, so it's nice to see that it is a delivery, and not another person trying to sell me insurance or switch ISP's.

 

[TechBill]

I would place it directly above the door and set it up with corridor settings.

Don't go any higher than the door itself. Just rest it right on top of door frame if you got room above it.

I have about the same width porch as you, you can read about it in my installation thread. When I did testing with my camera on front porch, I found best to use corridor settings and turn it sideway which gave me the full view from porch floor to ceiling then I use zoom in until the wall almost disappear from view which also gave me a nice facial shot.