focus problem?
- Thread starter dirkusa
- Start date
Drop the smooth stream to the default 50.
If you move the camera around slightly, does that improve focus throughout the image.
One of the things you will find are that these cameras are not infinity focus. Some cameras are better than others in that regard and the 54IR is better than some, but some are so severe that focus is soft/blurry anything short of 15 feet or past 20 feet.
What about your other settings - are they all on default? Brightness, sharpness, etc. all impact the focus.
In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars. It should further help with your focus as well.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
If you move the camera around slightly, does that improve focus throughout the image.
One of the things you will find are that these cameras are not infinity focus. Some cameras are better than others in that regard and the 54IR is better than some, but some are so severe that focus is soft/blurry anything short of 15 feet or past 20 feet.
What about your other settings - are they all on default? Brightness, sharpness, etc. all impact the focus.
In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars. It should further help with your focus as well.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
1. check/download/show here a few seconds video.. not snapshots from cam (5442-s3 do very bad snapshots)..
2. this fence looks like 2 meter hight.. so it's minimum 4 meters wide (2:1 proportion).. there are 9 fence parts so it's 36 meters long (120 feet)..
I think you require too much from 36mm optics 4mpx camera - to have details at 120 feet distance.. even half of that...
especially there is only grass & fence grid = very small detailed textures there..
rotate/move this camera at something more normal / with bigger details / less distance..
and You will known is this camera (soft lenses) or too much requirements from you..
2. this fence looks like 2 meter hight.. so it's minimum 4 meters wide (2:1 proportion).. there are 9 fence parts so it's 36 meters long (120 feet)..
I think you require too much from 36mm optics 4mpx camera - to have details at 120 feet distance.. even half of that...
especially there is only grass & fence grid = very small detailed textures there..
rotate/move this camera at something more normal / with bigger details / less distance..
and You will known is this camera (soft lenses) or too much requirements from you..
@wittaj thanks for the detailed recommendations. I did have the smoothness at 50 originally but thought that setting improved it some.
@steve1225, thanks and yes, your distances are pretty accurate.
Attached a new snapshot & video - don't have time to do more careful testing, but moved the camera some, and it looks to me like the sun thing on the table @ ~30cm is in good focus, but the AC unit and bird feeder @ 2 to 2.5m away are blurry.
@steve1225, thanks and yes, your distances are pretty accurate.
Attached a new snapshot & video - don't have time to do more careful testing, but moved the camera some, and it looks to me like the sun thing on the table @ ~30cm is in good focus, but the AC unit and bird feeder @ 2 to 2.5m away are blurry.
Attachments
it's not the sharpest camera...
you can try ask seller to replace...
you can try ask seller to replace...
Interesting. I won a IPC-T54IR-AS-3.6mm-S3 in Andy's last raffle. When I swapped it with a couple other cameras (5442T-ZE and a N55DU82), the image was noticeably worse than the cameras it was replacing, so I put the new camera in storage. As with your experience, I noticed a sharp focus point and then blurriness in the back. Even my 4K-X and 4K-T cameras with their wide aperture aren't that bad. It's not horrible, and as samplenhold mentioned above, ID of a person is the most important thing. I even tweaked lots of settings with the camera, but I couldn't stand the resulting image.
Here is a picture to show what I experienced. I originally had a N55DU82 (on the left) pointed at my front entryway. I swapped it with the T54IR-AS-3.6mm-S3 (on the right). Not horrible, but the left camera looks better to me, and the nighttime image, which should have been better was not an improvement to the former camera. 
I mostly want to detect & get pictures/videos of wildlife (coyotes/hawks/squirrels/chupacabra) and people walking past far away - so maybe not just the typical ID the perp use case.
Ended up fiddling with the settings and get something I like much better (for Day, anyway):
Definitely usable now, though I'm still not convinced that there isn't some focus problem, so will try a replacement camera.
Appreciate the suggestions and feedback!
Ended up fiddling with the settings and get something I like much better (for Day, anyway):
- -10 sharpening
- +5 contrast
- 3D noise reduction off
- 25% WDC
- white balance based on a white painted region
Definitely usable now, though I'm still not convinced that there isn't some focus problem, so will try a replacement camera.
Appreciate the suggestions and feedback!
Last edited:
CCTVCam
Known around here
- Sep 25, 2017
- 2,829
- 3,706
I have 2 of these (3 if you count the replacement). At 25 feet you aren't going to recognise anyone. Interestingly though, this improves a bit for me with backlight control, although I now keep it off to keep the important foreground area brighter. I wonder if Dahua are doing something with the compression. I know for video gaming, they're staring to render the centre are of pictures with more detail than outer areas to reduce workload. I wonder if Dahua are doing something similar with video to reduce bit rates eg more compression away from the centre of the picture using AI? I've never known a 8mp picture that's very aretefacty outside of the central area or that couldn't be zoomed into. As this spans 2 cameras in the same location (old and new) in my case, It's unlikely it's a camera fault. Interstingly, as well, BI reports the mainstream as being 1080P and 3.5kbs instead of 4k and 16mbs I have set. Unsure if it's BI that's locking it lower or whether the cameras are compressing the stream hard for transmission.
Also, with more reference to the camera you're using, apertures used on CCTV cameras are often large these days to let in more light. Basic principles of photography say large aperture, shallow dof. There's only so much cameras can do and still gather light for night this side of variable apertures.
In both presented cases You trying record something which CCTV cams are worst at at day: infinite small detailed textures taking whole picture..
grass, walls, path / walks, decorative stones for the garden etc...
Today cctv cams do digital sharpening a lot..
they try digitally to show / increase the visible details using relative small resolution (in comparison to 48-100Mpx in mobiles or DSLR)...
and after that all that details (in case of those big small detailed areas there are millions of them) must be handled by video compressor.
Which must decide what to include in compressed stream (and at what detailed level) and what to ignore (to save bandwidth)...
Playing with sharpening and contrast setting (usually decreasing) helps a lot..
Color4K in latest firmwares is best example of this fenomen. his video compressor is not capable to handle all details created by image signal processor in this model and 8Mpx resolution..
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
That is academic. No one cares about what the image looks like with default settings. Dial in both cams as best you can, and then make the image comparison.
Still image photos from these cameras are not the intended use.
An image comparison of an object in motion at night is a better test of a camera's capabilities.
I am not trying to win the photo contest at the County fair with these cameras.
I want the ability day and night to be able to freeze frame and get a clean enough image of the person or vehicle that can be sent to the police to help make an arrest.
An image comparison of an object in motion at night is a better test of a camera's capabilities.
I am not trying to win the photo contest at the County fair with these cameras.
I want the ability day and night to be able to freeze frame and get a clean enough image of the person or vehicle that can be sent to the police to help make an arrest.
CCTVCam
Known around here
- Sep 25, 2017
- 2,829
- 3,706
For a start, set lighting to Outdoor for Daylight not auto. Auto will produce erratic results. None of the exposure settings want to be on auto. You have to dial professional cameras in for the best pitcure because there's much more adjustability. There's also much more bright sky in the Dahua picture which will dim the picture down as the aperture will react to the additional brightness dimming the shadows. It's about 50% sky in the Dahua camera and about 15% in the Arlo. Tilt the Dahua camera down so it sees the same amount of sky as the Arlo. That should improve the backlight situation straight away.
bigredfish
Known around here
Two things in addition to whats been said in prior posts
This is the VF Bullet 5442 S3 snaps taken from SmartPSS .jpg
Example snap from SmartPSS (left .jpg) and direct from the NVR (right .png)
There is softness the further you go out. But nothing like the 4K's which are very limited
- Light - Time of day/sun position makes a huge difference
- These newer cameras need higher bitrates - I run 10240 CBR H.264.H
This is the VF Bullet 5442 S3 snaps taken from SmartPSS .jpg
Example snap from SmartPSS (left .jpg) and direct from the NVR (right .png)
There is softness the further you go out. But nothing like the 4K's which are very limited