First Time Cameras Setup and BlueIris

[J Sigmo]

I'm not talking about the camera with the wall in the scene. I discussed that in my post up higher in the thread.

I'm referring to the camera images he posted here:

My other camera is also better with PIR Off. Should I just leave IR Light off?

View attachment 33484

View attachment 33486

He wondered why it, too, looked better with the IR illuminator switched off.

In that case, it seemed like the fault of the IR illuminator having too narrow of a beam to accommodate the camera's wider lens settings.

But looking again, I see what you mean.

Having the two walls in that image also fools the auto exposure and makes things overall, too dim.

I'd like to see him zoom in enough to exclude the walls completely and see how things look then.

I have a couple of these same cameras, but still need to mount them. I'll do some testing. I hope the IR beam width matches the wide end of the zoom range better than his example seems to show. But I actually plan on forcing them into color mode and using or augmenting the ambient light rather than using the built-in IR illuminators.

This is what I get for trying to view this stuff on my phone rather than on a real PC!

edit to add:
He might be better off moving the camera forward some so he can still get the wide view out into the yard but avoid lighting up and viewing the walls.

 

[awsum140]

This is a screen capture of a 2231, zoomed in to max, IR set at about 30%. I turned the IR on to provide some lighting from the camera to capture details of anything facing the camera. Actually, other than that detail loss without IR, the IR doesn't need to be on in this particular case. The street light across the street provides enough ambient light but is in front of the camera. For the moment I'm leaving the FOV as is to keep an eye on my neighbors mailbox since he had someone rifling through it recently which is why I even have the problem with the lighting from the streetlight.

At the price point of the 2231 you are probably never going to find a better night vision camera.

 

[J Sigmo]

That's really what I was hoping for and expecting from these cameras.

I will have a similar situation here. There is fairly good existing light from a street light across the street. But just as in your case, it will be backlighting people facing the camera.

And I also have a porch light that stays on all night.

But I may either use the camera's IR for some "fill light" or install another porch light to help out. I do like the idea of being able to lock the camera into color mode, so white light would be better for that.

I'll just have to see how things look when I get at least one mounted.

A feature that could be implemented in firmware, if some camera maker wanted to do it, would be a way to draw areas to be ignored, just like drawing motion detect areas, but in this case, areas to include and exclude from the auto exposure calculations.

That way, light sources (like street or yard lights, etc..) or close-in reflective areas, could be excluded from the auto exposure calculations. They'd be blown out, but the areas of interest could end up properly exposed.

Not as exclusive and arbitrary as spot metering, but fixed areas with relatively complex shapes that could be ignored for the purposes of achieving better auto exposure.

You saw it here first. My published "prior art" for this idea.

 

[J Sigmo]

I got one of these 2231s installed, and it certainly has better low-light performance than the other cameras I have up (Reolink RLC-410). Yeah, I know!

We have a porch light that stays on all night, and with that on, the camera (in the default auto and medium settings) doesn't even switch out of color mode, while all of the Reolinks switch over to B&W with their IR illuminators fired up.

I did some testing to compare the Reolinks with the new Dahua 2231, at night, with various combinations of lighting, and I'll post a thread showing all of that, and come back to this thread and put in a link.

I tried the 2231 with its IR illuminator operating and compared that to how it looks with its IR turned off. The ambient light here comes from the street light across the street and lights at the neighbors across the street because I had our porch light switched off to better see how this camera does in very dim light.

In some ways, I prefer the look with the illuminators off because the illuminators do concentrate the IR into a rather narrow beam in the center. This is with the lens' zoom set to the widest, however.

Dahua 2231 with only a street light and neighbors' lights for light source.

Dahua 2231 with it's IR on in "Smart IR" mode, along with the street light and neighbors' lights for light source.

 

[jrf]

While that frame with the IR off looks nice...it's static. Throw some motion into video...then pause it..then see how clear your resulting image is. That's the real test...and I'm betting you will be less than pleased. You do have quite the hot spot there with the IR on. Don't rule out adding an external IR illuminator (or white light which is even better). I know that adding white light isn't always practical in some cases.

 

[J Sigmo]

While that frame with the IR off looks nice...it's static. Throw some motion into video...then pause it..then see how clear your resulting image is. That's the real test...and I'm betting you will be less than pleased. You do have quite the hot spot there with the IR on. Don't rule out adding an external IR illuminator (or white light which is even better). I know that adding white light isn't always practical in some cases.

I agree. Please read the entire thread, and see my posts above in this thread. Later, when I have time, I will post my more complete testing, perhaps in a separate thread, showing the results when different lighting is used with this camera.

I get good results with my porch light on, and the IR LEDs of three other nearby cameras providing a lot of good fill-in out at the edges of the scene.

 

[awsum140]

Keep in mind that you can also "dim" the IR lighting if you choose "manual" mode. I have one set at about 30% to provide some frontal illumination in a location that has a streetlight in the backgroud.

 

[J Sigmo]

Keep in mind that you can also "dim" the IR lighting if you choose "manual" mode. I have one set at about 30% to provide some frontal illumination in a location that has a streetlight in the backgroud.

I think that's a good idea, too. You're providing what photographers call "fill" light for the scene. This is why you often see a photographer shooting people outdoors, in bright sunlight, using a flash or flashes, too. The idea is to even out the harsh, high-contrast light.

In my actual use, I have a porch light that's on all night, and three other cameras firing from about the same area, and together, their IR lighting floods the area quite evenly.

This could be done using more white or IR illuminators, of course.

As I mentioned in my posts above, lighting is very critical for any photography because cameras do not capture the wide dynamic range that our brains "create" as they process the data fed in from our eyes. That wide dynamic range is largely "faked" by our brains, but we come to believe that it is actually what our eyes can capture (it isn't). So then, we expect to see that out of our cameras, but it just doesn't happen.

So photographers learn this and get a feel for how important it is to provide extremely even lighting in order that the finished photos seem more "natural" to the viewer. Of course, a "natural looking" photo is actually far from natural. Done well, it is a representation of what our brains trick us into thinking is natural as we view a real scene. All of the dynamic range of a real scene must be compressed into the very limited dynamic range that a photographic print (or a computer monitor) can render.

And the same effect often comes as a rude shock to folks setting up their security cameras. As with any photography, we need to provide smooth, even illumination of the scene if we want the resulting "portraits" of the bad guys to be pleasing and seem "natural".