DH-IPC-HFW4800EN (4K 1/2.3" bullet)

[klasipca]

That low exposure is useless for most security purposes. I only use it for one of my baby cams just because I don't really care about motion and recognition. So, honestly are you happy with the results and did you expect exactly what you are getting?

 

[bp2008]

Honestly, in this comparison none of the cams look good at night but they were cheap, but this 4k one for $250 is just pathetic. Daylight, is not that great either though considering the cost at full 4k, but watching it in 1080p is fine.

Yes, I agree, night video is bad. Even though there is no ambient light to speak of around my house at night, there is a lot of infrared. Even in the beam of the strong IR illuminator the image is blurred so badly it makes it look like a 1 megapixel camera and a mediocre one at that. It only looks okay with a long exposure time, but that makes it worthless for identifying anyone or any thing.

As you pointed out even in the daytime it doesn't look that good. I think the bit rate is partly to blame. I can't set the bit rate any higher on this 8 megapixel camera than I can on a 2 megapixel camera. The 4MP camera with a 6mm lens has markedly better clarity despite having an almost identical number of pixels per foot.

 

[bp2008]

So, honestly are you happy with the results and did you expect exactly what you are getting?

I hoped this thing would be capable of higher bit rates to go along with the higher resolution. I think that would have made it look better. But with Dahua cameras, lowering the frame rate actually lowers the maximum bit rate so you can't even cheat to get higher quality images by reducing FPS and keeping bit rate high.

I will not buy another. Not at this price. Probably not even if it was half the price.

 

[klasipca]

What if you set to lower resolution and max bitrate does it improve day time video? Since it's newegg you could easily return it and btw if you didn't get Huisun cam you will be much happier with the results even though it's not 4k.

 

[bp2008]

What if you set to lower resolution and max bitrate does it improve day time video? Since it's newegg you could easily return it and btw if you didn't get Huisun cam you will be much happier with the results even though it's not 4k.

Lowering resolution also lowers the max bit rate. Good grief! I just tried (at night) 720p @ 10 FPS @ 2.8 Mbps and 1080p @ 10 FPS @ 5 Mbps, and both look significantly worse than 2160p @ 10 FPS @ 9 Mbps.

I'm keeping this cam, though mainly as a toy to look at the scenery. I am going to point it up a bit further so I get the hill tops and some sky, and hopefully not have a dynamic range problem.

Regarding Huisun... Yeah I've tried them. My dad wanted some cheap PTZs last year so I had him get two Huisun V1 bullets. By some miracle, they both still work, although one of them was unresponsive from December to July at a remote site where we couldn't get to it and power cycle it. The only camera brands that have not disappointed me yet are Hikvision and Dahua, because despite their flaws they are just so much more reliable.

 

[bp2008]

These are snapshots at some different resolutions. The camera is doing something funky with lower resolutions to make them look really strange when zoomed in. Excessive sharpening or something.

4096x2160


3840x2160


1920x1080

 

[bp2008]

I have noticed an odd quirk of this camera. For a few seconds after applying encoding settings, the video quality is much better. The video quality degrades after just a few seconds. (Update: this appears to be fixed with the latest firmware. See my post about firmware versions)

Here are some cropped captures to show what I'm talking about. The first image was captured just after applying settings. The second, 45 seconds later.

These are the full captures:




I can't explain it. If the quality remained as good as it is in the seconds after applying video settings, I would be much more impressed with this camera.

 

[smoothie]

I'm sorry to hear that camera didn't deliver, I had hoped it would be a viable option but it looks like it just isn't going to fly. I think I'll stick with the 4mp dahua turrets or bullets. Thanks very much for sharing all the stills and videos @bp2008 and the unbiased review.

 

[nayr]

might disable 3d noise reduction and reduce sharpness and see if that helps the daytime image

 

[bp2008]

might disable 3d noise reduction and reduce sharpness and see if that helps the daytime image

Nope. It did not help.

 

[bp2008]

I checked the firmware version I was using for the captures above. It is from March 2015. I found several newer versions on that Dahua firmware ftp site you can find easily if you search.

March 2015: Included on camera
June 2015: Similar to March 2015 version.
Sept 2015: Encoding issues. 4096x2160 doesn't work, 3840x2160 has poor quality iframes.
Nov 2015: 4096x2160 still doesn't work. 3840x2160 has better video quality than other versions. Night vision is improved slightly.

The first time I loaded Nov 2015 firmware, there were bad compression artifacts in the video. But this hasn't happened since I shuffled through the other firmware versions and came back to Nov 2015. In fact, encoding quality does not appear to be degrading over time like I saw on the earlier firmwares. It is producing consistently better results.

 

[bp2008]

Night vision is a little improved with newer firmware, but I think that is only because they tweaked auto mode to use a longer shutter speed or something.



It is still very weak at night.

 

[MR2]

this is the $375 Jobbie at night

https://www.dropbox.com/s/62mo9qkb9b6q1wq/12mp night.jpg?dl=0

 

[bp2008]

For anyone who is interested, this is a better illustration of the field of view difference between 3840x2160 and 4096x2160. The larger of the two does not work in the latest firmwares for this camera.

 

[LittleScoobyMaster]

Night vision is a little improved with newer firmware, but I think that is only because they tweaked auto mode to use a longer shutter speed or something.



It is still very weak at night.

That does seem rather weak indeed.

How can it be determined if this other Dahua 4K camera will look any better, the same, or worse than this one?

Lux ratings don't seem to be helping anymore. Do the sensors need to be compared using other lighting specs?

For example, the hf81200e lists a .001 lux rating and the hfw4800en lists a 0 lux rating. There must be a better way to measure how well they will really perform in low light. I wish there was a true benchmark, like what we have for video card speed.

IPC-HF81200E 4K camera:

http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/ipc-hf81200e-792.html

 

[TVT73]

I think this cam has a missing feature hevc h256. Such a high resolution as an video stream with h264 is not an good idea. If you would have good details, and the maximum is 10Mbit then of course this is the bottleneck.

Next thing, please disable your old ir spot. If you post pictures from nightview, please use the internal leds. Normally the high power Leds of the newer generation has a really good coverage by night. All my cams have a much better night quaility as what you posted. How many does your cam have? With my HFW-4431 and 1 LED i have a really good view within 10m@4mp / h265.

 

[kylescameras]

does anyone have the link for the firmware update? I can't seem to find it on Dahua's site.

 

[dougri]

I think this cam has a missing feature hevc h256. Such a high resolution as an video stream with h264 is not an good idea. If you would have good details, and the maximum is 10Mbit then of course this is the bottleneck. ...

agreed... unlikely you are getting the maximum resolving power of the 8mp sensor with the bandwidth limitations using h264. I know from personal experience with still images, I start losing significant detail with 8MP jpeg images when file size decreases below about ~1MB-2MB... at 15 fps X 8b/B, MJPEG requires ~120 Mb/s to make full use of that 8MP sensor... h264 (in near-ideal content) can achieve the same with ~1/5 the rate, or 24Mb/s. This camera is limited to 16Mb/s? Definitely need HEVC, which could do the same with ~12Mb/s, apparently. These are rough numbers of course, but before even thinking about it, I looked at the samples and thougt to myself 'why are these so overly compressed?' I think Dahua has discontinued this model, maybe for this reason?

 

[bp2008]

Actually the bit rate limit varies with the frame rate, but I don't think you can get it as high as 16 Mbps. Between that and the poor low light ability, I wouldn't buy more of this camera.

I think Dahua just recently released a new 4K 15 FPS bullet that is cheaper but probably has all the same deficiencies.

Edit: The new model I'm referring to is IPC-HFW4830E-S which evidently has a smaller sensor and h.265 compression. I still don't think I'd buy it even though it may be half the price.

 

[dougri]

Actually the bit rate limit varies with the frame rate, but I don't think you can get it as high as 16 Mbps. Between that and the poor low light ability, I wouldn't buy more of this camera.

I think Dahua just recently released a new 4K 15 FPS bullet that is cheaper but probably has all the same deficiencies.

Edit: The new model I'm referring to is IPC-HFW4830E-S which evidently has a smaller sensor and h.265 compression. I still don't think I'd buy it even though it may be half the price.

But if they implemented h265 well, at least the daytime IQ should be much better... maybe even make full use of the sensor... just waiting on Blue Iris to support h265, I guess.