Illumination for color starlight?

[dirtyjersey]

I Have an IPC-T5442TM-AS and amcrest 4k bullet 2.8mm. Getting ghosting at night from the starlight on my front porch. Have screen shots of some ahole walking by covertly pulling car door handles all down the street.

It looks like the street lamps aren't enough for that distance at night and the noise reduction is blurring things.

Should I just get an off cam ir illumination setup or something better for that color night vision?

Just wondering what level of light might be needed without putting in glaring spot lights that stand out on the street?

 

[aristobrat]

If you haven't seen this thread about tuning images, it's prob worth a bookmark:
Common issues with camera image | IP Cam Talk

My suggestion would be to reduce the 3D noise reduction as much as possible, increase the shutter speed, test and see how things look. The catch for the faster shutter speed is that it reduces the amount of light in the image, which may cause the 5442 to switch to B/W mode.

AFAIK, IR light only helps when the camera is in B/W mode. If you want to keep the camera in color mode and help it out, you'd need to add visible light.

 

[bp2008]

It is like @aristobrat said, only visible light will work when the camera is in color mode, and it will be incredibly obvious to anyone on the street or sidewalk that a light is pointing at them. After all, street lamps are quite bright and they are not even enough in this case.

 

[biggen]

It's all about shutter speed. Quicker shutter reduces light to the camera but removes ghosting and blur.

Before you do anything else set the shutter range on your camera at nighttime for 0 - 7ms and boost the Gain a bit. See how color motion and images look with that. The image will be a bit darker but you shouldn't have ghosting and blur.

The problem with all these cameras is the default factory settings make nighttime still images look amazing. You tell your friends "Look how bright it is at night with this camera!". Then you realize that the default settings have the shutter speed to the slowest it goes and moving images look like shit.

It takes a ton of white light to force color at night with satisfactory results but try those settings and see how it looks.