Hello IPcamtalk members!

[Green Eggs & Ham]

Hi everyone, I thought it would be good to sign up as I have a lot of learning ahead of me. Some great experience and know-how being shared here, so thank you for having me on board.

As a brief intro, I'm fairly tech literate and tinker with electronics, but I had never owned any form of security camera until about 2 years ago when I moved to a new area with higher crime rates and and started a job that took me away from the family overnight. On recommendation of a family member I started out with a Reolink system (NVR + various cameras) which really impressed me at first and is still running now, but increasingly I've become frustrated especially with the poor the low light performance of the cameras as Reolink seem intent on raising sensor resolution than addressing actual performance.

Ultimately what I am hoping to achieve is a wired system essentially like the Reolink NVR, using POE cameras that record to a local device, but able to be accessed securely and remotely, with the ability to send notifications to mobile devices for the user to be able to quickly identify who, what, and where.

Looking forward to throwing around some ideas!!

 

[gwminor48]

Hello, welcome to the forum.

 

[wittaj]

Welcome.

Sorry you went down the Reolink trail.

Once you get something better, you will realize how poorly the Reolinks performed at night.

It has been shown that Reolink (and most consumer grade cameras) favor nice bright static images at night over performance. So at some point even if you can set shutter settings, the camera will override your input in favor of a nice bright image. This is done by slowing down the shutter and increasing the gain. So then you see what Reolinks are notorious for - ghost blur invisible person images at night and inability to capture plates.

So the difference between a better camera like say a Dahua and a Reolink or some no-name camera on Amazon with a Starlight sensor is that you can set parameters on the Dahua and it will hold. If you set parameters on these other cameras that would result in a darker image the algorithm internally says "idiot alert" and it won't let you set parameters that the firmware thinks will result in not displaying a nice bright image. Don't believe me, set the shutter to 1/10,000 at night and the image should be completely black. It won't with the reolink...or any cheap camera. It will override your 1/10,000 shutter and favor a bright image. It is a good test to determine how good the camera is.

But most consumer grade camera manufacturers know that consumers chase MP, so to keep costs down, they will put 1/3" or 1/2.8" sensors in the cameras. And 8MP on a 1/3" sensor looks great on default settings for a static image at night....and that is what the consumer looks at. No consumer then tests it with motion.

It is always comical to me when a neighbor buys a camera and asks me to help them set it up. I set the shutter to 1/60 or 1/120 and the image gets darker (because the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed but the faster shutter is what gets clean captures with motion). And they always complain the image is too dark. So at some point they go back to auto settings and then capture a blur motion of the perp that door checked their car.

You can certainly set up a system that is all local and alerts you based on your criteria.


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

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Low light place the starlight always the best, try our IPC-T54IR-ZE S3 or IPC-T54IR-AS S3 , Chase 4K is ok, Full color IPC-Color4K-X and IPC-Color4K-T are the good choice.

 

[Green Eggs & Ham]

Thanks everyone!

It has been shown that Reolink (and most consumer grade cameras) favor nice bright static images at night over performance. So at some point even if you can set shutter settings, the camera will override your input in favor of a nice bright image. This is done by slowing down the shutter and increasing the gain. So then you see what Reolinks are notorious for - ghost blur invisible person images at night and inability to capture plates.

Absolutely - you've summed it entirely I think! The turning point for me recently that showed me I need to re-assess what I am doing was looking back over a clip of a kangaroo eating some plants in the garden and realising that when it runs across the yard (admittedly low light but not dark, ie before the cam switches to IR mode) it quite literally disappears for a distance of about 10 metres when you go frame by frame. As in, you show that frame to someone and aside from perhaps a slight blur there is no way in the world anyone would believe that there is an animal running across that yard - yet the shrubs, fence, and car in the background are quite clear and easy to identify!

No doubt that is not news to anyone here, but it has been enough to make me rethink what I am doing.

starlight always the best

- thanks for the recommendations, I will check them out later when I have time for some reading!