Help needed with night time settings

[Azman]

Hi, I have a IPC-HDW2231R-ZS overlooking the road at the corner of our front yard.

I've been trying to dial it in but can't seem to get it how I would like. There are 2 street lights either side of the FOV on our corner of the road and a further street light at the next cul-de-sac. Other than that there is no other lighting. No external IR, only the IR from the camera, although it is quite light (definitely not dark at all). The street corner is about 20 feet from the camera. The camera is zoomed all the way in.

Here are a couple of short videos of what I have at the moment

Ideally what I am trying to do is get good captures of people walking past (not expecting to get too much on the opposite footpath - too far away I think) and be able to identify what type of cars are driving past (in as much detail as possible). Not sure if all that is feasible and am happy to be told so.

View attachment CornerGarden.20210819_185829_2.mp4
View attachment CornerGarden.20210819_185829_1.mp4



















Any help would be much appreciated.

These are my current settings, cheers Aaron

 

[wittaj]

Doesn't look too bad. It does seem further than 20 feet if that is zoomed in all the way.

At that distance, try turning off SmartIR and do manual IR and maybe try near and far at 100.

Try turning 3D NR down as much as you can.

In most cases the contrast number is at least equal to or higher than the brightness number.

Match FPS and iframe number, so make them both 15.

 

[The Automation Guy]

The double image that you see behind the person walking is due to the high gain. Personally I would slow the shutter speed down (0-12 or 0-13 to start with) and turn the gain down as much as possible. I also agree with turning the IR to manual and turning the IR sensors up all the way. You aren't going to have someone walk very close to the camera where the IR would wash them out, so the SmartIR/Auto settings are not very helpful here. Getting more IR onto the target area is going to help. Adding a secondary IR emitter can help as well, although that isn't as easy as changing a setting!

I'm surprised how grainy the image is and the fact that it isn't smooth. It may be because the brightness and contrast is turned up so much. Honestly I thought the 3D NR was turned off because that is what it normally looks like with it off. I would also normally say to turn the 3D NR down to like 30, but I don't know how that will look in your case.

Personally I'd leave white balance on auto just to cover any weird color shifts going from day to dusk and night to dawn. At night it's dark enough that the camera is using IR, so the color white balance isn't going to be a big deal. Of course if "Street light" looks best during dusk/dawn when the camera goes back to color mode, then it is OK to leave it as is.

 

[Azman]

Thanks guys, I'll make some adjustments and report back.

 

[Azman]

OK. So I have made a few adjustments. I'm not sure it's any better - just different. Although I seem to have gotten rid of the ghosting to a degree and a lot of the noise but it is a lot darker.

Trying to brighten the image with gain or gamma just added more noise. Slowing the shutter more introduced more motion blur. It was a bit of a catch 22 change this it affected that. Try to compensate for that would affect this.....and on it went. It was hard to know when to stop and just post where I am at now to let smarter brains than me analyse it.

I'm thinking that I do need to get some extra lighting. Would have to be IR though as I don't fancy shining a dirty great spotlight at oncoming drivers. Having said that though it may slow them down a bit down our street which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Any more suggestions that I should try?

New settings:






And got this


View attachment CornerGarden.20210820_202132_1.mp4





View attachment CornerGarden.20210820_202132_2.mp4

 

[wittaj]

It is definitely a balancing act that all of us have to do.

Try knocking the sharpness down a tad and see if some of the noise grain goes away.

More IR light would help as well.

The bright images only work on TV and in the stores. Once you dial cameras (and TVs) in, they usually are darker. Give it a few days and this will seem normal to you. What do we want a nice bright image but motion blur and cannot identify anything, or a darker image but can identify the person?

 

[Azman]

Thanks Wittaj,

Reduced Sharpness from 50 to 47......not sure it made much difference. I'm thinking I need more light......

I also re-measured the distance to the curb, it's more like 12m (36ft) not 20ft.......so I'm also wondering if that will have an affect on it as well.

Anyway........Anything else I can try?

View attachment CornerGarden.20210822_185627_1.mp4

 

[user8963]

Anything else I can try?

• External light
• 5442 Model

i had the same problems on these models with this sensor .. anytime if you add more gain/gamma/... it will noise really fast

here you can see the difference between imx290 and sensor from 5442... its not a perfect comparison because you cannot adopt it directly to your scene... cheapest solution should be an external IR spot

 

[wittaj]

Thanks Wittaj,

Reduced Sharpness from 50 to 47......not sure it made much difference. I'm thinking I need more light......

I also re-measured the distance to the curb, it's more like 12m (36ft) not 20ft.......so I'm also wondering if that will have an affect on it as well.

Anyway........Anything else I can try?

Yep, everyone always underestimates distances LOL, and unfortunately that impacts the video quality.

Going from 20 feet to 36 feet absolutely has an affect on it and why I questioned if that was more than 20 feet originally because it certainly looked further away.

The pixel per foot (PPF) value is almost cut in half going from 20 to 36 feet. The higher the PPF, the better the quality and resolution.

And even though the IR distance is rated at 50 meters, that is under ideal conditions with a very slow shutter and no movement. Once you dial it in to not get blur and ghosting, the effective distance is cut at least by half if not 75% depending on if any other ambient light is out there.

So you could add more IR light, but keep in mind that at that distance with that camera, clean face captures will be iffy, or upgrade the camera in MP/sensor size and optical zoom. I would go with the Z4E at that distance.

Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well.

• 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera
• 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
• 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
• 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
• 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
• 49225 PTZ - great PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.

 

[MikeLud1]

Thanks Wittaj,

Reduced Sharpness from 50 to 47......not sure it made much difference. I'm thinking I need more light......

I also re-measured the distance to the curb, it's more like 12m (36ft) not 20ft.......so I'm also wondering if that will have an affect on it as well.

Anyway........Anything else I can try?

View attachment 99291

You can go even lower with the sharpness try 25 +-5

 

[Azman]

You can go even go lower with the sharpness try 25 +-5

Thanks, I'll give that a try too.

Yep, everyone always underestimates distances LOL, and unfortunately that impacts the video quality.

Going from 20 feet to 36 feet absolutely has an affect on it and why I questioned if that was more than 20 feet originally because it certainly looked further away.

The pixel per foot (PPF) value is almost cut in half going from 20 to 36 feet. The higher the PPF, the better the quality and resolution.

And even though the IR distance is rated at 50 meters, that is under ideal conditions with a very slow shutter and no movement. Once you dial it in to not get blur and ghosting, the effective distance is cut at least by half if not 75% depending on if any other ambient light is out there.

So you could add more IR light, but keep in mind that at that distance with that camera, clean face captures will be iffy, or upgrade the camera in MP/sensor size and optical zoom. I would go with the Z4E at that distance.

Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well.

• 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera
• 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
• 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
• 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
• 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
• 49225 PTZ - great PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.

Just got permission from the Minister for Finance to get "another" camera......

• External light
• 5442 Model

i had the same problems on these models with this sensor .. anytime if you add more gain/gamma/... it will noise really fast

here you can see the difference between imx290 and sensor from 5442... its not a perfect comparison because you cannot adopt it directly to your scene... cheapest solution should be an external IR spot

Yes, I've seen that, makes for interesting viewing.

 

[Azman]

So, I adjusted the sharpness to values between 20-30. I couldn't see any appreciable difference.

I think I'll get another camera while Andy has his sale on. I'll also look at installing an external IR light as well.

Thanks for all your help.