I have confused myself, and I would like to buy some cameras

[M041842]

I have spent way too many hours researching cameras, including extensively reading posts on here. At this point, I have melted my brain. I would therefore appreciate some help.

My house is on the side of a hill overlooking a city; and I would like to create a setup that allows me to zoom in on highway traffic, keep tabs on the neighborhood below me, monitor the weather, and keep track of interesting aircraft as they pass over my house on final approach. There have been some huge fires, a major tornado, and lots of airplanes that I would like to have documented. The good view is oSo...what do I do? I keep telling myself that I should buy a PTZ with 20x or more optical zoom, but should I be approaching this differently?

 

[Ssayer]

With one cam? Based on what you just said, I'd have three. One for the sky, one for the neighborhood below, and one for playing with (the 20x PTX)...

 

[sebastiantombs]

Three rules
Rule #1 - Cameras multiply like rabbits.
Rule #2 - Cameras are more addictive than drugs.
Rule #3 - You never have enough cameras.

As @Ssayer said, you're going to need more than one to do that. The sky camera can be a fixed focal, but for the other two uses a PTZ, with 20x or higher zoom, will be needed. A PTZ on "patrol" will always end up missing the thing you really want to see, Murphy's Law.

 

[mat200]

I have spent way too many hours researching cameras, including extensively reading posts on here. At this point, I have melted my brain. I would therefore appreciate some help.

My house is on the side of a hill overlooking a city; and I would like to create a setup that allows me to zoom in on highway traffic, keep tabs on the neighborhood below me, monitor the weather, and keep track of interesting aircraft as they pass over my house on final approach. There have been some huge fires, a major tornado, and lots of airplanes that I would like to have documented. The good view is oSo...what do I do? I keep telling myself that I should buy a PTZ with 20x or more optical zoom, but should I be approaching this differently?

Hi @M041842

I'd start with one nice affordable Dahua OEM PTZ and get the hang of it...

 

[catcamstar]

Indeed, I agree with ^^ the more the merrier. With the airplanes, you could hope that you'd hit an airplane on final approach when doing a programmed tour, however, I would suggest you (at least) try to have a camera with an programmable interface (or even better: alarm IO's) so that (for example) flightradar24 follows the real time positions of the planes, and when they are inbound, your camera gets instructed to that vision point. So many creative possiblities This hobby can be so intense

 

[Old Timer]

I have some 4k (8m) fixed cameras as over view cameras (30-40 ft up a tower), and under the LED parking lot light.
They capture a lot during the day, and you can zoom in to get most of the stuff you want to capture.
At night my 5442's capture the close stuff I need to identify. I still go to the over view cameras to
see what happened, then select what close camera gets it best.
I have one over view pointed to the SE to capture the thunder storms, tornado's, airplanes, etc.
Yes, cameras multiply like rabbits.