focus problem?

[CCTVCam]

Yeah you will never get total back to front sharpness this side of variable aperture which doesn't exist.

As for the Arlo. Even though the colour balance looks better in the picture above, which is explained by the use of Auto and including too much sky in the Dahua picture, when you look at the Dahua picture, the gas cyclinder and rocks in front of it look more detail and sharper despite the colour inbalance and backlighting caused by the sky. The real difference will come about at night though. Try running 1/250th second (4ms) on the Arlo with gain below 50. I bet you can't see anything 2 feet out.

If variable aperture ever comes about. I'm sure f11-22 at day and f1.6 at night will sort it. The only problem then apart from the additional cost will be iris motor reliability / lifespan in cameras permanently exposed outdoors.

 

[dirkusa]

Got the replacement Dahua, time for a scientific side by side comparison! Same model & firmware, same location, same time, same settings (using an imported config file). Implemented all the recommendations from you guys (except the shutter speed ones).

 

[bigredfish]

Clear difference

What shutter are you using ? It can matter

 

[dirkusa]

Here they are with Manual shutter 0-4ms, gain 0-30. I can't detect much of a difference from before...

 

[dirkusa]

Here's another comparison - the better of the two Dahuas against a Hikvision DS-2CD2347G2-LU (similar price, sensor, & lens). I tried to match brightness/contrast/sharpness to the Dahua as best as I could, and used the same stream settings. Seems like there is more detail in the center of the Hikvision image, and more natural color, but also more distortion and blur at the edges.

 

[bigredfish]

Id go with the Dahua in that shot. Contrast can play a big role

Seriously though it would take a lot of tweeking to both to get them dialed in -perfectly. I often spend many hours on a single camera just for one profile (day or night) and go back days later and do it again.

 

[dirkusa]

Yeah, already going down that road, lol. Here is my "county fair" version of both, less crispy and bright, more natural colors (to my eye).

 

[bigredfish]

Same contrast difference but again I’d go with the Dahua in that compare

 

[wittaj]

Every setting on the camera has impact on focus. Even saturation plays a role as shown in this thread.

What is in the field of view and the MP of the camera has an impact as well.

We get many threads here from time to time where someone goes from a 2MP camera to a 4MP or 8MP camera and they don't like the image.

Fields of view with lots of stuff in it - like gravel, lot's of leaves, fences, etc. can sometimes wreak havoc on the higher MP cameras. We see weird jagged lines on brick or fences that are not seen in the 2MP camera.

The higher MP cameras tend to have more sharpness that can cause these weird issues. Lowering bitrate or sharpness can fix those issues.

Now yours is the opposite, it looks a little soft. Crank the bitrate to the max with CBR and see what happens. It may just be all those jagged edges of the gravel and the leaves and the sky and the fence and the processor simply can't keep up and bitrate is too low for the field of view to accurately represent it.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^^
+1

10240 is my standard for 4MP and 16368 for 4K

 

[dirkusa]

Can't seem to get the same contrast on the Hikvision, increasing the contrast just makes it look too oversharpened/crispy. I agree with you, I like the Dahua better overall. The software is better, too.

Wonder if I got a rare bad one with that first Dahua, or if quality control on the optics is just a crapshoot?

 

[wittaj]

I am with you on the GUI. I find the Hikvision more difficult to navigate around.

We have found the optics on the cameras can have great variances.

Many of us bought two cameras at the same time and put one in either side of the garage so basically looking at the same field of view just from the left and the right and the parameter settings can be completely different between the two. Heck someone once saw a 3 watt difference in power consumption between two cameras from the same lot looking at the same field of view.

I try to remind myself that these are not DSLR cameras and the intended goal is to capture perps and bad things, so I don't overly concern myself with the static image, and your camera will get a clean capture of a perp going to graffiti that tank or something.

 

[bigredfish]

Can't seem to get the same contrast on the Hikvision, increasing the contrast just makes it look too oversharpened/crispy. I agree with you, I like the Dahua better overall. The software is better, too.

Wonder if I got a rare bad one with that first Dahua, or if quality control on the optics is just a crapshoot?

Lens could just be a teeny tiny bit off center?

 

[dirkusa]

Now yours is the opposite, it looks a little soft. Crank the bitrate to the max with CBR and see what happens. It may just be all those jagged edges of the gravel and the leaves and the sky and the fence and the processor simply can't keep up and bitrate is too low for the field of view to accurately represent it.

Interesting idea. I had it at 10240, but here's a comparison of 8192 and 14336 see if it makes a difference. These are a few seconds apart and the light is changing slightly, but I think the higher bitrate did definitely bring through more fine detail. .

 

[Mike A.]

... all those jagged edges of the gravel and the leaves and the sky and the fence and the processor simply can't keep up and bitrate is too low for the field of view to accurately represent it.

^ A lot of this. You've got kind of a worst case setting there with so much going on. Between the gravel, and the chain link, and the dirt, etc., it's hard to tell what's happening and any little differences are lost in all of the noise. And the camera kind of works that way too. The compression will try to level things where it thinks it can get away with it and grass, gravel, things like that often are where you'll see it more. Stick a sign or something out there so you have something better as a reference point if you want to try to fine tune it.

 

[CCTVCam]

What Mike and Wittaj said. If there's more detail, to fit it into the same data limit, the camera has to compress it harder which is why the quality drops off. More compression = more artefacts and mistakes. You're picture has horrendous levels of detail with all the small stones, dead blades of grass, chain links and leaves. If you can affords the storage space, I'd put the bit rate up to the maximum permitted level for the camera.