I'm tempted to get one of these
Dahua SD1A203T-GN Starlight Mini PTZcameras to use as sort of a fancy "
doorbell" cam. At least, that would be the kind of placement I want.
The PTZ would make it good for looking around the area and seeing if packages had been left on the porch, etc. And the low "doorbell placement" would make it good for identifying people at, or approaching, the door.
But the location would leave the camera staring into the sun much of the time because our front door faces due south.
Re-reading the advertising writeup linked to above, the wording describing the WDR doesn't necessarily mean that the camera itself is exposed to direct sunlight. Instead, they may simply be referring to the large dynamic range that we always get in a scene between deep shadows versus the directly-illuminated areas when a scene is lit by direct sunlight.
My concern, with any of these cameras, is that having the sun in the image for long periods will fry the sensor the same way anything but brief exposure this way will ruin the sensor in a normal photographic camera.
Trying this would be a rather expensive experiment.
With normal DSLRs and MILCs, you dare not aim them at the sun for any extended length of time. Newer lenses even move to close-focus and closed apertures when you remove power from them just to reduce the potential that someone will accidentally fry their camera by leaving it sitting where the sun will end up in its field of view.
Has anyone done this sort of mounting with one of these cameras? And if so, how did it fare after years of this direct sun viewing?
This seems like it would happen all of the time. Mounting a camera so it is looking to the south can't be all that uncommon. What happens when you do it, though?
Are these sensors protected somehow? I can't be the only person who burned things or lit fireworks with a magnifying glass when I was a kid! And I can assure you that a 50mm f/1.8 camera lens will also set fire to things quite handily.
Even though the security cam lenses are smaller due to the smaller sensors being used, those tiny, super-sensitive photosites on a Starlight sensor IC will really be experiencing some heat and intense radiation as the sun works it's way across the sky (and its in-focus image works it's way across the sensor) when the camera is placed the way I want to have it placed.
What say you who have ever mounted a security cam this way? And especially: How does this particular one handle this abuse?
