I also received a 4231 from Andy this past week. I replaced a Hikvision 2CD2332-I turret with the 4231 (L shaped back patio, so I didn't need the varifocal, 3.6mm is almost perfect). My backyard has motion lights but no external lights from anywhere, completely black other than the IR from the camera. The image from the Hik with the IR off is a completely black picture. The image from the 4231 with the IR off and only moonlight is better overall than with the IR IS enabled on the Hikvision. If you have any older Hikvision turrets, this is a worthy upgrade, IMHO. Of course the mounting is different so if you mounted these directly on the soffit like I did, holes don't line up (3 for the Hik vs 4 on the Dahua) and you are making new ones, which makes me wish I had choose to mount them differently; Perhaps a short depth waterproof box with multiple covers, mount the camera on the cover, new camera, just replace the cover.
I have external IR lighting in the front of the house because I didn't like motion events of bugs flying by the cameras all night and I turned the IR in the cameras off. I was going to add external IR in the back but the 4231 is so good, it's made me reconsider those plans. I'm going to install a higher class
PIR sensor and hard wire it to LED floods that cover the back yard from multiple locations. Regular light is more useful than IR when I need to walk back there at night anyways. FYI, when I said the picture of the 4231 with no IR is better than the 2332 turret with IR enabled, it is; very much so. That said, you will need some source of light if you want to get any facial features and want more than someone was back there with a height and weight estimate. If you don't have an alarm or lights and they don't see the camera, they may continue trying to do whatever they came to do anyways.
The rest of the Hiks will definitely be replaced with Starlights, with the exception of a PTZ I installed last year and a 4k that's en route from Andy for watching the kids in the front of the house; I'm not as concerned about a Starlight there as it's during the day when the kids are playing out there and a car tears through the cul-de-sac to turn around that I need coverage. I plan on adding a IPC-HFW5231E-Z5 focused at the entrance of the cul-de-sac to get better ID of vehicles/people entering and exiting. If anyone is interested in the 4k (HDW5830R-Z) I can start a thread about it and compare it to the Hikvision DS-2CD2532F-IS it's replacing.
Thanks, good to know. I had to convert it to .jpg. Again to the Hikvision 2332 (which was set at 1/30) there was no image, complete blackness. The 4231 was default except I had WDR on as I found it evened out the contrast of the picture during the day at the cost of colors being slightly off, disabling WDR at night didn't seem to effect the image so I left it on. IR is of course off. The next night it was cloudy so I expected a darker picture with the moon obstructed; the only difference was there was no shadow of the tree you see on the upper right. The rest of the image was just as clear as this. With IR on the Hikvision, the foreground is of course brighter but you can't see more than a few feet beyond the patio. The swing set, playset and tree are not visible at all. I can't believe the neighbor's storage shed is visible. For reference, the Patio is about 21 feet wide by 50 feet long.
