DS-2CD2T47G2P-LSU/SL - Disappointed with image quality

[war4peace]

Hello all,

I bought a DS-2CD2T47G2P-LSU/SL camera (Product link), and I am disappointed with it. Image quality is horrible; no matter the settings, I am unable to properly capture faces, license plates, anything of importance.
Faces are OK-ish during day, however, during night it's all a blur.
License plates are barely readable during the day (looks like it's based on luck), and just a white smudge during the night. I have attached a night snapshot with three static cars on the road.
I have also attached image settings that I think were relevant.
The camera is situated about 3.5m high, the white van in the image is maybe 8 meters away.

All I want is to be able to use passable images on CodeProject.AI ALPR via Blue Iris.
I am even willing to switch the camera with another (and reuse this for my courtyard), therefore I am open to other camera options, but it has to be a panoramic camera.
The reason for this is increased rate of petty (and not so petty) theft in the area.

I have tried:
H.264, H.265,CBR/VBR, played around with WDR, HLS, you-name-it. The image is still bad.

Or maybe I am a noob and don't get the settings right. Any advice would be useful.

 

[wittaj]

Classic case of trying to do too much with one camera...

You will NEVER get plates of a moving vehicle at a 1/50 shutter. 1/500 minimum if barely moving, but more like 1/1000 or 1/2000. But then the image will be black except for the plate

But it is the wrong camera to read plates. Too wide of an angle. Won't get plates with a panoramic camera under most situations.

Panoramic cams are great OVERVIEW cams, but poor IDENTIFY cams...

All this angle and camera view will be able to tell the police is what time it happened, but there will be very little IDENTIFY qualities of the perp with that wide angle.

 

[war4peace]

That makes me wonder why static plates are not being visible either.
The cars get pretty close to the camera, 4-5 meters is the closest for license plates to have better visibility.

At any rate, I have now done two things:
1. Changed the exposure to 1/4000. Most of the image is dark, but the license plates are still white smudges.
2. Checked the static cars license plates with various exposure rates, all the way to 1/100000. None of them are readable at any exposure speed.

Which leads me to the next question: Which camera should I use to properly capture license plates? OK, panoramic would not work. I can live with that.
Please help me choose the right camera

 

[wittaj]

At 5 meters, you need a camera with at least a 12mm focal length.

You need to make the plate as large as possible. For most that means the field of view is about the size of a vehicle.

If at a 1/4000 shutter at night and the image isn't completely black, the the camera is docking with gain or other settings.

 

[war4peace]

Looks like Hikvision have hidden gain to only be visible (and configurable) under the "Day" mode. No way to configure gain when in Night mode.
OK, I will rethink my life choices (that is, camera choices) and see what can I do about it.
Thank you for your responses!

 

[Spirch]

look at the sensor size, this alone wont help you at all

1/2.5 is bad at 4mp, no IR light, dual lens for wide view

yeah like wittaj said, bad camera for what you want

 

[war4peace]

I got that, I was wondering what should I replace it with.
(Maybe a dual-camera, with 1x wide camera and 1x dome?)

 

[trempa92]

i'd look for 1/1.2 sensor size camera, 2/4MP with ATLEAST 6mm fl if you wont go for varifocal for plates. Optimal would be as @wittaj stated 12mm.
Capturing faces also require p2face camera not panoramic.

If you need all that you need to sacrifice something. Either 180° or faces.

 

[war4peace]

Thank you, now I have my work laid out

 

[wittaj]

See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

 

[war4peace]

Thank you, I actually had read that thread start, but there's no Amazon here (Eastern Europe country) and I have been having a hard time translating EmpireTech into Dahua / Hikvision which abound here, with the codes being so similar within the same brand, but slightly different for other brands.
It almost looks like those camera manufacturers try their best to confuse us
But I promise I'll allocate several hours going through those links and finding the proper counterpart from the brands we have available around here.

 

[wittaj]

@EMPIRETECANDY sells all over the world. Reach out to him via DM and see if he can send to you reasonably priced. He can help you figure out which ones you need.

 

[war4peace]

Thank you! I will certainly do so.

 

[war4peace]

While I gather monetary resources for my next camera shopping spree, I have switched the panoramic camera with the courtyard monitoring camera (Dahua IPC-HFW3841E-AS-0280B). During the day, the car license plates are more clearly visible; not enough to be automatically recognized by ALPR, but enough to capture them on camera footage, which is much better than before.

 

[war4peace]

Update: During the night, stationary cars do have visible and readable license plates, moving cars do not.
For now, this is fine.