Infrared & White Light Illuminator Lamps for CCTV security systems
- Thread starter RBW
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Kawboy12R
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Pro: White light keeps you from tripping when you're chasing perps.
Con: White light keeps the perps from tripping when they're stealing your stuff.
A bit more seriously though, white light allows you and everybody else around to see folks poking around where they shouldn't be. It also allows your cameras to see in colour if you've got enough light and they're decent enough. There are drawbacks to white light though, like glare in roads and walkways, light pollution (some folks like sleeping or seeing the stars, etc), etc. Try shining a white spotlight into the road bright enough to catch plates at night and see if you remain Mr. Popular.
Use what makes sense. In a home setting, I like enough white light around to make my cams work decently but not have it like daylight. Add motion lights and external IR until you're happy. Most of mine in key places aren't bottom end cams so I run them with the internal IR off, exposure time faster than auto mode chooses, and add light as needed. Keeps the false positive motion alerts to a minimum and really improves the pics in fog/rain/etc.
IR causes reflection problems. Some are really obvious (blown out license plates, reflective tape on clothing buggering up exposure, especially on cams with limited dynamic range). Others are not so obvious, like what colour clothing was "that guy" wearing?
Check out the clothing that this miscreant is wearing- Dahua 4431C-A vs Dahua 4231C-A vs CCTV-TOP IMX322
What colour is the t-shirt? The most obvious answer is that the pic is black and white so you can't tell colour but the shirt is OBVIOUSLY a lot lighter than the dark pants, right? Wrong. The shirt is pitch black and the jeans are black but factory faded a bit. IR will cause screwups like that that are impossible to anticipate or guess without, preferably, having at least ONE cam in colour or else possibly in B&W viewing things with zero IR shining on the subject, which means white light only. If someone called in a complaint against a devilishly handsome guy in dark pants and light coloured shirt the cops would see someone wandering around in a black t-shirt and jeans and might say he doesn't match the description and keep looking.
Sooo, lots of white light is always better for the cameras than IR except when snagging plates at night. The tradeoff comes when you either don't want to or really can't add enough white light for whatever reason. Then you add 850nm illuminators if you don't mind the red glow or 940nm illuminators if you have a bad aversion to the industrial/Cylon/Terminator look and understand the vision tradeoff. 850>940 when it comes to illumination per amp.
Con: White light keeps the perps from tripping when they're stealing your stuff.
A bit more seriously though, white light allows you and everybody else around to see folks poking around where they shouldn't be. It also allows your cameras to see in colour if you've got enough light and they're decent enough. There are drawbacks to white light though, like glare in roads and walkways, light pollution (some folks like sleeping or seeing the stars, etc), etc. Try shining a white spotlight into the road bright enough to catch plates at night and see if you remain Mr. Popular.
Use what makes sense. In a home setting, I like enough white light around to make my cams work decently but not have it like daylight. Add motion lights and external IR until you're happy. Most of mine in key places aren't bottom end cams so I run them with the internal IR off, exposure time faster than auto mode chooses, and add light as needed. Keeps the false positive motion alerts to a minimum and really improves the pics in fog/rain/etc.
IR causes reflection problems. Some are really obvious (blown out license plates, reflective tape on clothing buggering up exposure, especially on cams with limited dynamic range). Others are not so obvious, like what colour clothing was "that guy" wearing?
Check out the clothing that this miscreant is wearing- Dahua 4431C-A vs Dahua 4231C-A vs CCTV-TOP IMX322
What colour is the t-shirt? The most obvious answer is that the pic is black and white so you can't tell colour but the shirt is OBVIOUSLY a lot lighter than the dark pants, right? Wrong. The shirt is pitch black and the jeans are black but factory faded a bit. IR will cause screwups like that that are impossible to anticipate or guess without, preferably, having at least ONE cam in colour or else possibly in B&W viewing things with zero IR shining on the subject, which means white light only. If someone called in a complaint against a devilishly handsome guy in dark pants and light coloured shirt the cops would see someone wandering around in a black t-shirt and jeans and might say he doesn't match the description and keep looking.
Sooo, lots of white light is always better for the cameras than IR except when snagging plates at night. The tradeoff comes when you either don't want to or really can't add enough white light for whatever reason. Then you add 850nm illuminators if you don't mind the red glow or 940nm illuminators if you have a bad aversion to the industrial/Cylon/Terminator look and understand the vision tradeoff. 850>940 when it comes to illumination per amp.
Another interesting fun fact is that IR will see through some things. I wandered out in front of my camera wearing Underarmour and when I went through the video is was pretty scary lol. If you ever see someone filming a swim met or gymnastics meet with a black lens be wary. IR tends to go through polyester stuff, most pictures from say a cell phone won't show this because they have a filter - security cameras seeing in the dark don't! I bet in those pictures the t-shirt is a blend vs straight cotton?
Too cold here for me now to do it but when it was a little warmer the results were hilarious!