Hikvision Mini Dome - Better low light?

[Bryan Bittner]

I've got a Hikvision mini dome installed that I'm trying to figure out if I can get better color night images out of. It is a 4mp 2.8mm DS-2CD2542F. The 1st image below is from the Hikvision and the 2nd is from a Skybell doorbell camera. I was surprised that the Skybell image looks so much better than Hikvision.

Is this just a bad low light camera in color mode or is there a setting I can change to make things look better?

I know the area is pretty dark and I plan to add some lights around the fence but I'm not sure that will be good enough with this camera.

How about a different camera I should switch to? I'd like something as small as possible because my HOA does not want us having exterior cameras and this mini dome is nice and small and unnoticeable.

My settings:

Exposure: 1/25 (40000us)
Brightness: 64
Contrast: 50
Saturation:50
Sharpness 50
Gain: 100
DNR on 100%

 

[fenderman]

The hikvision 4mp sensor is not very good in low light...
look at the dahua starlight models, there is a starlight minidome..

 

[nayr]

put it in B&W mode and it'll become dramatically more sensitive plus it'll be able to use onboard IR..

Even the starlights struggle in Color if you dont have adequate lighting for it, The IR Cut filter is on when its in Color mode so the onboard lighting is disabled.. For General Purpose Security they do perform vastly better than any 4MP Camera in Color or B&W at night though.

Typically you only need one centralized over view camera for color data, then run everything else in B&W for maximum detail.. you can tell what color a car it is if its blurry, but the B&W images can tell you what make/model it is.. both combined give the best results, but if picking one or other B&W at night is always better for security use.. A Color camera should just be supplemental for best results.

 

[FrankMCN]

In addition to the above, you can try bumping up the brightness to 80, drop the contrast to 10, reduce sharpness to 30 (will reduce picture noise), drop the DNR as well as that causes alot of ghosting - I run mine at 30 (you don't need as much when you drop sharpness). Also play with BLC as that can brighten things up without the need for WDR which again adds alot of noise.