Dahua Ultra Starlight Varifocal Bullet (IPC-HFW8232E-Z)

[Dragon]

So you are using digital zoom? if so I would turn it off as soon as possible, it will do nothing but bad things for your image, optical zoom only, that will be 99% of the problem I would bet. If you are requiring more zoom then do not use digital, either move the camera closer or get a larger optical zoom

By digital zoom I just mean in Milestone I'm zooming in on the recorded video to see how clear things look, see how artifacts look, etc.

Here's a full frame image without the digital zoom, 0NR, 0 sharp, parts whited out for privacy:

 

[CamCrazy]

By digital zoom I just mean in Milestone I'm zooming in on the recorded video to see how clear things look, see how artifacts look, etc.

Here's a full frame image without the digital zoom, 0NR, 0 sharp, parts whited out for privacy:
View attachment 21775

Sorry, understand, well firstly that image looks very clean to me and I assume at 100% it looks similarly good if not better. If you can't read the plate at 100% size then you need more optical zoom, for fail safe license plate reading you really need the vehicle to be filling more than 50% of the frame width, ideally face on to the vehicle although this is not always possible, what happens when you push it to 100% optical zoom other than dropping some light and probably bringing in more motion blur at lower light levels? I am pretty impressed with that image, object edges look very good, equal or better than I could get out of my Dahua NVR all be it with lesser specified 5231 camera so the 8232 and/or Milestone are doing a good job there, I would be pretty pleased with that result, just need more optical zoom for the license plates

 

[Dragon]

Sorry, understand, well firstly that image looks very clean to me and I assume at 100% it looks similarly good if not better. If you can't read the plate at 100% size then you need more optical zoom, for fail safe license plate reading you really need the vehicle to be filling more than 50% of the frame width, ideally face on to the vehicle although this is not always possible, what happens when you push it to 100% optical zoom other than dropping some light and probably bringing in more motion blur at lower light levels? I am pretty impressed with that image, object edges look very good, equal or better than I could get out of my Dahua NVR all be it with lesser specified 5231 camera so the 8232 and/or Milestone are doing a good job there, I would be pretty pleased with that result, just need more optical zoom for the license plates

Finally found the full frame on the noisy plate:


It's earlier in the day than the others and more overcast, so more noisy. So maybe parts of the license are blurred due to noise, but it really looks a lot like compression artifacts. Having noise be so much more intense in spots right next to clearer spots doesn't seem right. In the previous frame, the letters blur rather differently and more evenly.

I don't want to zoom in farther because I'm not just trying to catch license plates, I'm trying to catch everything in a decent sized area in front of the house. Although the license is tough to read in that particular frame, if I scroll through the frames there's usually some that make things clear enough. Another possibility are clearer frames are nearer keyframes. I have a keyframe every second.

 

[CamCrazy]

Finally found the full frame on the noisy plate:
View attachment 21779

It's earlier in the day than the others and more overcast, so more noisy. So maybe parts of the license are blurred due to noise, but it really looks a lot like compression artifacts. Having noise be so much more intense in spots right next to clearer spots doesn't seem right. In the previous frame, the letters blur rather differently and more evenly.

I don't want to zoom in farther because I'm not just trying to catch license plates, I'm trying to catch everything in a decent sized area in front of the house. Although the license is tough to read in that particular frame, if I scroll through the frames there's usually some that make things clear enough. Another possibility are clearer frames are nearer keyframes. I have a keyframe every second.

I see what you mean, best to try and push as many key frames as possible for improved quality, that should assist in eliminating the artifacts. Catching license plates at that angle with the vehicle almost coming across the frame is going to be a tough ask with a fairly wide angle shot, higher resolution with all things being equal should help but at night the game changes - if you could point the camera a bit more to the right it would help a small amount but understand you want to cover the area directly in front of the camera also. Try pushing the key frames up as much as you can and/or as much as your bandwidth will handle.

 

[Dragon]

I decided to optically zoom it in 100%. GUI implied I was zoomed 66% before but this doesn't look 33% larger to me. Looks like late afternoon sun angle wipes out legibility of license plates:


I can at least see most of the plate if I turn off BLC:


Software won't let you do more than one keyframe per second.

 

[CamCrazy]

I decided to optically zoom it in 100%. GUI implied I was zoomed 66% before but this doesn't look 33% larger to me. Looks like late afternoon sun angle wipes out legibility of license plates:
View attachment 21783

I can at least see most of the plate if I turn off BLC:
View attachment 21784

Software won't let you do more than one keyframe per second.

Thanks for the sample images, I think personally the best approach to this assuming you would like to catch license plates and the full image would be two cameras with one zoomed, probably running black and white with high shutter speed, 20fps and HLC enabled. If license plates aren't high priority then maybe the Bosch with higher resolution will do the job during the day but night could turn out to be a whole other ball game!

 

[TechBill]

Finally found the full frame on the noisy plate:
View attachment 21779

It's earlier in the day than the others and more overcast, so more noisy. So maybe parts of the license are blurred due to noise, but it really looks a lot like compression artifacts. Having noise be so much more intense in spots right next to clearer spots doesn't seem right. In the previous frame, the letters blur rather differently and more evenly.

I don't want to zoom in farther because I'm not just trying to catch license plates, I'm trying to catch everything in a decent sized area in front of the house. Although the license is tough to read in that particular frame, if I scroll through the frames there's usually some that make things clear enough. Another possibility are clearer frames are nearer keyframes. I have a keyframe every second.

I don't own this model Dahua but I own several different model of Dauha and other brand ip camera.

I can tell that based on my experience with different ip cameras and also I work for a company that provides video conferencing phone and blurry spots on image like this sometime mean the camera's processor is being overtasked at that moment.

Try this test, lower fps to like 10 or 15 and set resolution to 720p if it allows you to set it at that resolution. If there is an improvement then you can set it back to higher resolution but you will have to adjust other camera feature not to overburden the camera processor.

 

[Dragon]

I can tell that based on my experience with different ip cameras and also I work for a company that provides video conferencing phone and blurry spots on image like this sometime mean the camera's processor is being overtasked at that moment.

Try this test, lower fps to like 10 or 15 and set resolution to 720p if it allows you to set it at that resolution. If there is an improvement then you can set it back to higher resolution but you will have to adjust other camera feature not to overburden the camera processor.

Thanks for the theory, TechBill. However, I still get the blur even at 10fps with all camera features turned off including 3DNR, sharp, and all forms of motion detection. I could try changing 1080p to 720p but the camera is useless running like that so I don't see the point.

If you zoom in on this picture, you can see a lot of square-shaped JPEG style compression artifacts in the background terrain. I overlaid a 16x16 grid to fit the edges of each compressed square and they fit the blurry spots on the license perfectly, so I think the problem is just over compression of the video stream.


On the slight chance that Milestone is recompressing the stream and causing the problem, I'm going to test if it still happens to video recorded to the local SD card of the camera vs the stream recorded by Milestone but I need to wait for an SD card to be delivered.

 

[bigredfish]

Um, I cant imagine you're going to ever get any consistent LPR with that attack angle.. anything more than say 30 degrees fuggetaboutit...and generally speaking if you are focused any wider than the vehicle itself you wont get consistent reads. Takes a dedicated LPR camera in most cases. I guess you guys already discussed not using any kind of digital zoom even on the static image, it will only pixelate/blur.

 

[Dragon]

Um, I cant imagine you're going to ever get any consistent LPR with that attack angle..

I'm not trying to get automated LPR working, I just want to be able to read the plate manually if necessary. That's certainly possible, at least during the day.

I've now got the Bosch Dinion 8000 5MP set up and it's mostly a big improvement. At night, with Dahua and Bosch set to 1/120 shutter, all noise reduction off, no SSA or similar, the images are pretty similar in brightness but Bosch has significantly more noise:


Then I noticed a car was significantly more blurred in Dahua, which makes me think it's not truly using 1/120 shutter but something somewhat slower, thus it produces less noise. Also, the Bosch car is a bit brighter, especially through the windows, which implies it's capturing more photons despite the faster shutter.


Here's a night jogger much more visible and unblurred with Bosch despite Bosch's slightly wider view angle (plus Milestone's filtered Bosch VCA event UI and an HIK wide-angle camera that sees only darkness behind the jogger):


Even so, Bosch is only somewhat better at low light pickup, which is not the magnitudes better I was hoping for given the price of the camera. Of course, Bosch is getting a 2992x1680 resolution image compared to 1920x1080 on the Dahua, so Bosch is more light sensitive per sensor area. The overall image it captured is not enormously brighter, but the extra pixels and lower blur make identification much better. Bosch can also be set to a 1920x1080 mode with 32% greater light sensitivity (monochrome 0.00275 lx instead of 0.004 lx), and it can do a 4:3 2704 X 2032 mode as well. Changing modes resets recordings and settings so I didn't try the other modes.

Obviously Bosch still won't show license plates on moving cars at night. Damn. If someone actually slowed or stopped to do something nefarious I might catch the plate. Plates are clearly visible in the day.

Bosch object detection is very good and I've only found one false positive so far that I can't explain. I thought it was producing a false positive on large shadows that appeared suddenly as a cloud passed over but I wasn't paying enough attention and can't find those clips now. I've yet to see it fooled by birds or wind-blown plants. I have both object detection and line crossing enabled in the street region and for some reason line crossing doesn't catch every car that object detection catches. I'm reasonably sure the problem is the default "debounce time" of 0.5sec which means an object must be present for half a second before and after crossing the line - some cars were fast enough to miss that window. Tried 0.1sec but since then it missed 2 in 9 events. Hmmm.

I also have object on property intrusion detection and it caught two delivery guys and me entering the property but did not trigger on exiting the property, which is as intended. It did get two false positives during a particular part of the day when passing cars seem to have reflected light onto the property. There are a million sensitivity adjustments that I assume can correct that.

Unlike Dahua, Bosch exposes individual alarms for each of its 8 possible object detection setups so I can see and filter on each one in Milestone.

I did get local recording going on Dahua so I could review its line crossing detection. It missed every single car that crossed the line I set up on the street overnight and missed 10 out of 17 cars Bosch caught during two lower-traffic daylight hours. I'm wondering if the problem is running in 10fps mode instead of 25fps since I read somewhere object detection requires higher frame rates. I switched to 25fps and it caught 1 in 7 cars passing in the first 45 minutes. Pretty bad. Bosch is running 30fps, btw, and 25fps is the minimum it can be set to locally (Milestone can still be set to only record 10fps if desired).

Local recording on Bosch in response to object detection is annoying to set up. It seems to require adding a script to Alarm > Alarm task editor. I could find no examples online but pieced this together from other examples, docs, and experimentation:

Recording alarmRecording := { Camera(1) };
if( VCARule(1,1) || VCARule(1,2) || VCARule(1,3) ) then alarmRecording else Stop(alarmRecording);

The script basically says record if any of my 3 VCA (Video Content Analysis) rules is setting off an alarm. The 'else Stop(alarmRecording);' part is important or recording keeps going indefinitely which screws things up like the Bosch web interface won't refresh the list of recorded events.

There doesn't seem to be a way to set Bosch to have different profiles based on light level. Argh. I set it to force a night profile at 7:30pm and day at 7am using a slider control, but in doing that, it automatically replaced my 'Alarm task editor' script with this code to change profiles at those times:

//{{modeSchedule_start
BicomCommand cmdModeDay:={Server(CameraSrv)ObjectId(0x0200)Payload("0x0003")};
BicomCommand cmdModeNight:={Server(CameraSrv)ObjectId(0x0200)Payload("0x0004")};
Timer daily:={TimeBegin(07:00)TimeEnd(18:30)};
if(IsActivated(daily))then cmdModeDay else cmdModeNight;
//}}modeSchedule_end bee776abb9663063bf589df48a093205

I had to add my code again. Annoying.

Bosch has a "Contrast enhancement" setting which seems to perform a similar operation to Dahua's SSA. It does a better job but still blurs moving things too much for my taste so I disabled it (EDIT: The artifacts I saw were caused by sharpness, not Contrast Enhancement - I now use CE).

Bosch has 3DNR with separate sliders for temporal (frame to frame) noise reduction and spatial (neighboring pixel) noise reduction levels. I turned it off during the day and left it at default values for night.

Bosch has a slider for sharpness that defaults to "0" in the middle of the slider. I noticed that adds some black pixels to the edges of things which may look good in full screen but they create ugly jaggedness in places when you zoom in. It's especially annoying on license plates where it makes parts of the letters really dark while other parts remain faded. Reducing it to -10 seems to eliminate all dark pixels, while reducing it to -15 (max) seems to actually add a blur filter that makes things hard to see.

Bosch's web interface wasn't working right with IE 11 on Win7 using an ActiveX component it installed, but it works in Chrome without adding any components (using HTML5?). It started working in IE after restarting. The interface is rather primitive when it comes to playing back recorded video and doesn't let you zoom or easily navigate the timeline. Play backwards doesn't seem to work right, and there's no frame step.

Web interface isn't showing options to configure VCA events after I upgraded to the latest firmware, and it wasn't working right for VCA event setup on stock firmware even though it showed the option. I have random problems with the web interface like losing ability to show camera video or parts of the UI disappearing that seem to get fixed if the browser is restarted.

Bosch has a lot of different software you can install, including phone apps and Windows apps.
I tried Bosch 'Video Client' for playing saved videos but it won't show video in live or playback windows. It also isn't showing my VCA alarms. I don't know what's wrong but not too impressed.

I used the 'Configuration Manager' Windows app to set up VCA events. I was impressed that you can set up detection regions with polygonal shapes rather than just rectangular shapes. You can even make polygonal privacy masks.

I downloaded videos recorded to the Bosch SD card and compared to ones downloaded from Milestone and they are identical. I confirmed that by navigating both to a particular frame at the same zoom level, screen capturing, and using a "difference" compare in Photoshop - all pixels were identical. I did the same in a second video to be sure. I picked a random frame in both videos. So Milestone is not altering the video stream before saving it.

Bosch produces fewer artifacts than Dahua but I can still identify artifacts in complex backgrounds (leaf debris) if I look closely. I have not noticed any blurring of license plates due to the artifacts as I do with Dahua. Bosch marketing claims they use some intelligence in what areas they keep detailed and it seems like maybe they do.

Bosch does a significantly better job at making faces identifiable during the day (Dahua set to 1/2000 shutter, Bosch to 1/2500 because it lacks 1/2000, no NR, SSA, sharpness, or other processing):


I'm glad I got the more expensive lens with 1.5 fstop for night operation because manually setting it to the next tick smaller than full open makes a noticable difference in noise level. It makes me wonder how much it would help to get an even wider aperture lens, but Bosch doesn't sell one.

 

[Dragon]

I've decided Contrast Enhancement on (similar to Dahua SSA) is preferable, at least during the day (not yet tried at night). The artifacts I originally thought it was causing were actually caused by the sharpness setting. Faces and license plates do not get noticeably blurred due to CE as they do with Dahua's SSA. First, without CE:


For some reason, Dahua with default brightness/contrast and no backlight compensation overexposes bright areas, perhaps as a compromise to keep darker areas more visible. Bosch refuses to overexpose anything so its license is darker. However, the Contrast enhancement checkbox on Bosch fixes the darkness without introducing blur (no idea how):


In Bosch, CE is checked by default so this is how they intend the image to look, so maybe that's why they don't compromise on overexposure. In Dahua, SSA is off by default and turning it on makes a license unreadable. I'm amazed I can't find Bosch bragging about CE or how they do it on the web. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually a fancy low level feature of the image sensor they use, but they don't seem to want to reveal what sensor is used.

Back to VCA on Bosch:
Between 10pm and 9am, Bosch missed 2 line crossings of 27 object present detections. This is after I set the limit of object present on each side of the line to 0.1s. Both times it missed were when a car moved from left to right across the line, which I had placed a bit left of the center of the screen. I should have had it placed right of center because things are visible on the right of the screen a bit longer as they get smaller.

I did find one case of a detected line crossing that was not detected as object present. It was a fast-moving motorcycle. I'm relatively sure the problem was that object present was set to 0.5s minimum time and the motorcycle was not on screen that long. I found a case later in the day where a truck was fast enough to avoid the 0.5s limit as well. I lowered it to 0.1s. I also decided to just eliminate the line crossing detection and use object present detection exclusively.

I tried Bosch's "Video Client" Windows app on my 2016 Win 10 laptop and it has the same problem as on my Win 7 desktop - it won't show live or recorded video. Bosch has another Windows app called "Video Security" (demo video) which seems like a re-done version of Video Client using a more modern touch-like interface and better options for grouping cameras into "sites" and supporting recording servers. It works for playback and live viewing. I find the interface unintuitive with a lot of features requiring special gestures like dragging the play button left/right or clicking an unobvious icon to display a timeline but it should be good once you get used to it.

Video Security does not display object outlines and paths recorded by the VCA features, which sucks. Seeing those outlines is critical when you want to tweak settings to eliminate false positives or false negatives. I suspect "Video Client" would show the outlines but I haven't found a demo video online that demonstrates that. The only thing I've found that will display outlines is IE 11 with Bosch's ActiveX installed. I wouldn't mind using that but the interface sucks and tends to freeze if left idle too long. It also ignores clicks on certain buttons under certain conditions that make no sense. Hitting refresh on the browser will unfreeze it but you lose where you were on the timeline. Whenever first opened or refreshed, it starts playing the video despite the play button showing it's paused. Things behave weirdly when in that state.

The main thing I can't figure out is how to make it record on the local SD in response to VCA alarms and include 5 seconds of pre and post recording. (EDIT: I figured it out - see next post) As I mentioned in the previous post, I can set up a script to initiate recording but it only records from the moment of the alarm to the end of alarm, not 5 seconds before/after. In the web interface > Configuration > Recording > Recording Profiles:

• 'Alarm recording' section is set to pre-alarm 5s, post-alarm 5s, and alarm stream: Stream 1.
• 'Alarm triggers' is set to 'Analysis alarm 1' checked.

I would think this means it will record on a VCA alarm, at least on the first VCA alarm if not on any VCA alarm, but it never records. This seems like a bug unless "Analysis alarm" means something other than Video Content Analysis alarm. Manual is not helpful. I tried setting that page to 'Continuous recording' but nothing is recorded there either. I don't know what that setting means unless it means start recording for any alarm and never stop unless an operator clears the alarm. Starting recording manually and leaving it on seems to break all the playback interfaces which refuse to show new alarms or recorded video until you stop the recording manually, so it seems like the system is not meant to operate properly with video continuously recorded to SD. Or at least you're not meant to easily review video during continuous recording.

 

[Dragon]

Argh, I finally figured out how to do VCA alarm recording properly based on another section in the manual:

After completing configuration, activate the recording schedule and start scheduled recording. Once activated, the Recording Profiles and the Recording Scheduler are deactivated and the configuration cannot be modified. Stop scheduled recording to modify the configuration.
1. Click Start to activate the recording schedule.
2. Click Stop to deactivate the recording schedule. Recordings that are currently running are interrupted and the configuration can be modified.

So, I set up recording profiles like this:


I removed my Alarm Task Editor script. Then I went to the Recording Scheduler tab and clicked Start so it looks like this:


Now I get local recordings on each VCA alarm that include 5s before and after the alarm. I'm unreasonably excited about this.

 

[Dragon]

I finally got Bosch Video Client (BVC) to display recorded video and VCA outlines. I still can't get it to play live video, but I have many ways to play live video so I'm giving up on that. Installing BVC 1.7.5 instead of the latest 1.7.6 did not help. Logging on as the 'user' user instead of the 'service' user may be what gave me access to recorded video, though I later used 'service' and it worked as well, so I don't know what changed. Either I was using it wrong all along or all my uninstalling and reinstalling fixed it. It doesn't show any video unless you click within a grey or yellow area of the timeline, which I might not have managed to do originally. If you're zoomed out too far in the timeline it's easy to click a spot that looks yellow but doesn't actually get you to video. On the other hand, there is a button to 'Go to latest recording' that shows video when clicked, and I'm almost certain I tried that button originally and got no video displayed.

Another weird/frustrating thing with BVC is it defaults to showing times in some weird offset (maybe UTC?). To make it show correct times that correspond to the camera time settings, you must enter user preferences and check a box labeled 'Show local device time'. Before I did that, I thought it wasn't showing any recorded video or alarms for the last many hours.

BVC seems to have no way to automatically advance to the next alarm or next recorded video during playback. That's enormously stupid. It just sits there playing blackness till you manually find the next clip. There is no list of clips to scroll through either. If you pause the video during blackness (space works to pause), the 'move to next frame' button is enabled and clicking it advances to the first frame of the next recorded clip. Really clunky but at least it's something.

Video Content Analysis (VCA) is overall enormously impressive. It generally recognizes and outlines moving people and not their shadows. I just watched a person come by shining a flashlight all over the place. VCA did not detect the flashlight beam as an object despite it moving around for about 20 seconds before the person appeared, but did detect the person and their dog as two objects as they moved across the screen, never getting confused by the flashlight. It also wasn't confused by them moving behind other objects like the chain in front of the driveway. I compared VCA detection to generic motion detection offered by Milestone between noon and 5:30pm and VCA caught every passing object that motion detection caught without catching any case of moving leaves/shadows that motion detection caught.

On the other hand, it's a lot less accurate at night in monochrome mode, especially with fast-moving cars. I watched an SUV that appeared grey in a similar tone to the hillside it passed in front of remain unrecognized till its tail lights were recognized as an object when almost out of the frame on the right. It left no green trail so it wouldn't have triggered line crossing. Nevertheless, comparing Milestone motion detection events to VCA object present events from 5:30pm to 8:30am, VCA missed nothing and eliminated some false alarms.

VCA does sometimes (1-5% of the time?) create a false alarm ~15 seconds after a real alarm. Generally, a car will pass through and at some point, the car's shadow or some light it shines will be detected as a second object. Somehow that object is not detected as leaving the frame and just sits there outlining nothing for ~15 seconds before VCA decides the object has vanished without moving, replacing it with a red box with a little X in the lower right (guessing that means object vanished). For some reason, the vanishing triggers a second "object present" alarm. I suspect this problem is a lot more likely when objects move quickly.

Something I forgot to mention about the lenses: I was worried that no lens Bosch sells has motorized focus, but the camera itself has motorized back focus. This seems to provide equivalent functionality to motorized lens focus. It seems that the proper setup is done using Camera > Installer Menu > Lens Wizard...

• Click 'Center' button to center the back focus in the middle.
• Adjust manual focus ring on the lens to get as focused as possible.
• Camera will now adjust its own focus when necessary. You can also draw a red rectangle indicating what part of the image to keep focused and it remembers that setting.

I also had to order a new enclosure for the camera since after two years, the coating on the cheap Aliexpress enclosure is rubbing off when touched to show bare aluminum. It's also too easy to break into (although I can't figure out how to make any enclosure too secure short of epoxying over all screw heads, which would only slow someone down if they had the right tools).

 

[Dragon]

Since Bosch is less accurate with object boundaries at night and fails with line crossing detection more often at night, I tried having Dahua alarm on any object entering the street, pretty much how I have Bosch set up. Bosch missed nothing that passed while Dahua caught just two white vehicles the whole night plus some slow-moving people.

In this case, it only seems to consider half the car to be an object, probably the half that was most illuminated by IR light:


The bounding box disappeared in the next frame, indicating the car was no longer considered an object. Then a huge white truck filling most of the frame passed, and Dahua only identified it as an object as it was almost gone (oddly, when it was in the darkest part of the frame):


Bosch saw it as soon as the cab was on screen:


Dahua settings:


The truck easily fits within the max size rectangle, though if it interpreted light from headlights and tail lights as part of the object it might have been too large at some points. I've increased the max size square to the size of the entire frame for tonight's test.

I'm guessing non-white cars that passed were simply too dim to be detected.

Dahua does better during the day but I still wouldn't rely on it as the only form of motion detection. Here, shadows of a person walking their dogs are detected as an object, and the dogs and half the person are not:


Bosch sees the person and dogs as one object, despite the similar color of dogs to background, and it ignores their shadows:


Here, the end of a truck and its shadow are two objects with the middle of the truck undetected.


Somehow Dahua got set back to 10fps despite my setting 25fps yesterday (maybe because it only stored 25fps for Day profile?). I'll let it run another night at 25fps and see if it does any better.

RESULTS: Dahua caught only one car (of dozens) the entire night. Interestingly, it was a black car instead of a white one. It also caught a night jogger.

 

[Dragon]

I realized that Bosch's low light specs are listed as using an f1.2 lens. I spent awhile and can't find such a lens. The largest aperture I can find on an auto-iris lens for 1/1.8" sensors is f1.4 on Tamron M118VG1250IR which is 12-50mm for ~$223 and Theia Technologies SL410 which is 4-10mm for ~$279. Theia works with sensors up to 1/1.7" and I'm not sure how or if that would affect the meaning of the f1.4 rating when used with Bosch's slightly smaller 1/1.8" sensor since more of the light the lens lets in would hit around the smaller sensor.

I found one series of f0.8 lenses from Kowa but they start at $1430. Ugh!

 

[CamCrazy]

I realized that Bosch's low light specs are listed as using an f1.2 lens. I spent awhile and can't find such a lens. The largest aperture I can find on an auto-iris lens for 1/1.8" sensors is f1.4 on Tamron M118VG1250IR which is 12-50mm for ~$223 and Theia Technologies SL410 which is 4-10mm for ~$279. Theia works with sensors up to 1/1.7" which makes me think the aperture might effectively be larger than the f1.4 rating on Bosch's smaller 1/1.8" sensor?

I found one series of f0.8 lenses from Kowa but they start at $1430. Ugh!

Tracking down lenses for IP box cameras can be a minefield, may be worth dropping an email to the brands above and see what they recommend, I gave up on finding one for the Dahua box camera in the end!

Interesting to see your results with the Bosch camera, appreciate you posting all the information and related snap shots. The interface for the camera looks pretty impressive, the fact it performs as well or better than the Dahua 2MP is equally impressive but then it should do for the price. Lens will almost certainly be key to image quality so worth pursuing if you can pick something up with a larger aperture. For those license plates I would still recommend larger zoom and less angle but understand it isn't purely being used for that purpose.

On a side note, in the last few days I have been noticing that the 2MP Dahua cameras I have seem to use pretty severe compression in H264 causing an almost watercolour effect to still and moving images, the MJPEG encoding is quite an improvement and I wish all Dahua cameras had this option but appreciate the bandwidth is 4-6 times greater for a similar frame rate. Hikvision, Samsung and others do have the MJPEG encoding though and for critical applications the quality is noticeably improved, not sure why Dahua choose not to give end users this option.

 

[Dragon]

the fact it performs as well or better than the Dahua 2MP is equally impressive but then it should do for the price.

It definitely performs much better in all lighting conditions than Dahua. Over and over I've compared output and people/cars/licenses are always more identifiable, higher res, better contrast, less blurred, and less artifacted/noisy with Bosch. I was hoping it would perform 4 times better given it's 4 times more expensive, but such is the way of price scaling. Contrast Enhancement without blurring is actually quite amazing. I also keep in mind that you're not just paying for impressive video but also for impressive object detection that actually works with Milestone/Blue Iris instead of requiring a Dahua DVR. You also get advanced features like scripted actions on alarm inputs/outputs and ability to search video later for specific things like all red objects of a certain size or all human heads wearing a certain color clothing. Oh, and you don't have to worry so much that firmware might have secret malware embedded.

If you do go with Bosch, definitely consider one of those two f1.4 lenses in p-iris version.

 

[CamCrazy]

It definitely performs much better in all lighting conditions than Dahua. Over and over I've compared output and people/cars/licenses are always more identifiable, higher res, better contrast, less blurred, and less artifacted/noisy with Bosch. I was hoping it would perform 4 times better given it's 4 times more expensive, but such is the way of price scaling. I also keep in mind that you're not just paying for impressive video but also for impressive object detection that actually works with Milestone/Blue Iris instead of requiring a Dahua DVR. You also get advanced features like scripted actions on alarm inputs/outputs and ability to search video later for specific things like all red objects of a certain size or all human heads wearing a certain color clothing. Oh, and you don't have to worry so much that firmware might have secret malware embedded.

If you do go with Bosch, definitely consider one of those two f1.4 lenses in p-iris version.

Agreed that once you reach a certain price point the gains will be marginal, the Bosch does sound very impressive in its functionality, they are tempting to some degree but when you require more than one or two it gets expensive very quickly! unless someone else is paying for them - currently still weighing my options on which camera to purchase next, no doubt that having a Dahua NVR matched to cameras helps with object detection, line crossing and so on but after having used Milestone it would be hard for me to go back to SmartPSS now.

 

[Dragon]

when you require more than one or two it gets expensive very quickly!

My plan is to have just one and other cams will be cheaper models. But we mostly just have to guard things on one side of the house.

I found this comparison of low-light cameras similar to Dinion 8000. Maybe some are more affordable? Bosch's 1080p starlight cams are another lower-cost possibility.

I sent Bosch an email asking about f1.2 lenses. We'll see if their customer service is worth anything.

 

[CamCrazy]

My plan is to have just one and other cams will be cheaper models. But we mostly just have to guard things on one side of the house.

I found this comparison of low-light cameras similar to Dinion 8000. Maybe some are more affordable? Bosch's 1080p starlight cams are another lower-cost possibility.

I sent Bosch an email asking about f1.2 lenses. We'll see if their customer service is worth anything.

That makes sense, I tend to try and do similar myself, once you've set the standard it isn't easy buying cheaper alternatives though! Interesting article and some very serious equipment out in the market place. The Bosch starlight cameras are still pretty expensive, believe entry level they start around $700-800 sadly, where I am located 600-700 euros and then you need a lens so not a cheap exercise, tempting as they are. I might still experiment with either a Dahua or Samsung low light box camera and Computar lens, see how that works out, I had kind of given up on that idea. Dahua 8232/8231 series is still not out of the question!

Have you tried recording with the MJPEG encoding on your Bosch yet? or do you use H264/5, MJPEG is a killer on bandwidth and storage but quality can be very useful, I assume the Bosch should be producing pretty good quality footage using H264/5 anyway. Interested to see how good the Bosch support is, you would hope that it matches the camera quality.