Mini-Review - 5442-ZE-S3 AKA T54IR-ZE-S3 - Replacement to 5442-ZE

@bozoreefer thanks for sharing the experience, @wittaj can help share some settings on BI, but different place use different light situation in the night.

Here just as an example by looney's settings, he is at a very dark night light place.

Day Settings:
Brightness 42
Contrast 50
Saturation 50
Sharpness 28
Gama 50
CBR 10240
Shutter 0-4ms
Gain 0-30
Exposure comp 50

Low light situation settings


Night Settings:
Shutter 0-8ms
Gain 0-50
Exposure comp 50
 
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Yesterday I upgraded my two T5442-ZE cameras to the T54IR-ZE-S3. The new T54IR-ZE-S3 is in a different league, especially at night. During the day I see little improvement.
For this comparison I have the new and old cam's at the same settings: Smart IR on, Shutterspeed 8.3ms, Gain 50.
 

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Good morning,

I have a 3 of these cameras (2 turrets and one bullet which is the one at the higher height in the videos) that I am trying to tweak the nighttime moving vehicles captures. Vehicles are moving 20-30mph and the turrets are fully zoomed and the bullet is not zoomed at all. All on most recent firmware. The lighter colored vehicles all seem to give a better picture because of the reflection off the vehicle i think. Any suggestions on adjustments?


Thanks alot!

Backlight-off
WB-Auto

The rest of the settings below are the same for turrets and bullet
 

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Those are not terrible.

If vehicles are your primary objective, I would force illuminator to manual and blast it at 100. The camera needs more "light"

Drop NR to no higher than 40

Consider a fixed shutter speed instead of a range.
 
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Those are not terrible.

If vehicles are your primary objective, I would force illuminator to manual and blast it at 100. The camera needs more "light"

Drop NR to no higher than 40

Consider a fixed shutter speed instead of a range.
OK, I guess I didn't think of distinguishing the objectives of the different cameras. For the 5442's in my driveway, I think I would want to focus on IDENTIFY a person coming toward the house. I did not post a video of that but I took one i think and it was pretty good. So maybe I don't need to tweak the settings on the driveway 5442 then. Like you always say, different settings may be needed for each camera to meets the objective i want. I didn't think of it that way.
 
Yeah, the Smart IR would be good for someone walking up towards the camera, but if the primary objective of the camera is an object 15 feet away or more, Smart IR will usually be ineffective and make the image worse as it adjusts the IR and then the shutter speed and other things change - it needs to be blasted with as much light as possible.
 
Yeah, the Smart IR would be good for someone walking up towards the camera, but if the primary objective of the camera is an object 15 feet away or more, Smart IR will usually be ineffective and make the image worse as it adjusts the IR and then the shutter speed and other things change - it needs to be blasted with as much light as possible.
Gotcha.. Yes the Smart IR works well as people walk up the driveway at night.. I can IDENTIFY well which I think is my goal for those two driveway cams as they approach the house. The "overwatch" camera that is higher up prob not much real use at night since its zoomed all the way out. Its purpose is during the day to basically watch the front of the home (driveway, yard, street and such). I'd like to get one of those 4 cameras to focus on getting as clean of image of a moving vehicle as possible. Make sense? You think the Z4 is the best for that? I still have 50% zoom to go but I am trying to get it to monitor that portion of the yard before the sidewalk as well as passing vehicles so I rally don't want to zoom in anymore if I can prevent it.
 
Gotcha.. Yes the Smart IR works well as people walk up the driveway at night.. I can IDENTIFY well which I think is my goal for those two driveway cams as they approach the house. The "overwatch" camera that is higher up prob not much real use at night since its zoomed all the way out. Its purpose is during the day to basically watch the front of the home (driveway, yard, street and such). I'd like to get one of those 4 cameras to focus on getting as clean of image of a moving vehicle as possible. Make sense? You think the Z4 is the best for that? I still have 50% zoom to go but I am trying to get it to monitor that portion of the yard before the sidewalk as well as passing vehicles so I rally don't want to zoom in anymore if I can prevent it.

Yes I think the Z4E is the best for that purpose.

Obviously everything is a compromise, but you need to decide the primary goal of the camera and if it captures anything else, just a bonus.

This is my Z4E at 1/500 shutter setup to get clean captures of vehicles. I have an overview to capture color.

I could zoom this out to capture people walking on the sidewalk, but then I will lose detail on both.

So I zoomed in all the way and will get a clean capture of the upper body and face of someone walking by on the sidewalk or in the street.

My overview will capture the other aspects - color, where they came from, etc.

1721488979652.png
 
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Yes I think the Z4E is the best for that purpose.

Obviously everything is a compromise, but you need to decide the primary goal of the camera and if it captures anything else, just a bonus.

This is my Z4E at 1/500 shutter setup to get clean captures of vehicles. I have an overview to capture color.

I could zoom this out to capture people walking on the sidewalk, but then I will lose detail on both.

So I zoomed in all the way and will get a clean capture of the upper body and face of someone walking by on the sidewalk or in the street.

My overview will capture the other aspects - color, where they came from, etc.

View attachment 198994
Makes sense. I’ll zoom that Z4 in tonight and see what sort of image I can get with it. I may have enough light to run my overview 5442 in color to try to capture some color images since I have enough IR cameras to get what I need from them. What basic settings do I need to set for that to run color at night to see if I can get a decent color pic at night. I never thought of forcing that overview camera to color at night. Thanks again.
 
If you have other cameras to capture the details, then you can run a slower shutter on an overview to get color.

So two schools of thought are run the camera in color with the fastest shutter you can that it still works in color. Might be 1/30 or 1/60.

Or add a true overview cameras like a 180 camera and use it on default settings, recognizing that you won't get IDENTIFY, but you will get color.
 
If you have other cameras to capture the details, then you can run a slower shutter on an overview to get color.

So two schools of thought are run the camera in color with the fastest shutter you can that it still works in color. Might be 1/30 or 1/60.

Or add a true overview cameras like a 180 camera and use it on default settings, recognizing that you won't get IDENTIFY, but you will get color.
OK. Makes sense. I’ll try running the slower shutter for now.

Lastly on an unrelated note in terms of cabling. I have a cable that runs from Andys 8 ch 5 series PoE NVR to one of my cameras. I’m thinking about putting an additional cam right next to that existing camera. Am I able to put a POE splitter at the end of that cable run and then add the two cameras to that splitter? I wasn’t exactly sure how that worked with power consumption and all amongst other factors. Or is it best to just run another home run cable.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I can run another cable which I knew my dumb ass should have done in the first place...Stupid mistake.

Lastly ( I swear last question for now....lol) I have attached one more video. This is my front porch which faces north. Good amount of shade until early afternoon. I would like to try to improve the facial images as people approach the front door. In the video the guys wearing a hat which makes it worse I know, but I am just showing the basic shot of the camera showing the shade. What settings are best to try to "lighten" up the image. I know I can setup another time profile or something like that but I am not sure what image settings wold best improve the quality of the shot in the morning hours until the side goes away by early afternoon. I see under "Backlight" there are several choices... Maybe "WDR" wide dynamic range will work or are there better suggestions. WDR def improves it. After you give me your recs, would I then set up 3 profiles in the "customized scene", one for day, one for night, and then one for that early morning time during the period of shade?

With that said, I want to thank you @wittaj, @bigredfish, @EMPIRETECANDY and others for all your help and contribution to this site. These cameras are out of this world compared to my previous "basic" security cameras. Andy is top notch and so helpful and responsive to emails and you guys all try to help us newbies get the best out of his products. It is much appreciated!!

Thanks again.
 

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You could try some of the compensation settings but that typically has some side effects. That looks pretty good to me. I wouldn't bother with it. I was expecting to see the typical bright background and very dark face but yours isn't bad. I can stop it at any point and get a clear identifiable image. If you do add compensation, just do it as little as you can.
 
You could try some of the compensation settings but that typically has some side effects. That looks pretty good to me. I wouldn't bother with it. I was expecting to see the typical bright background and very dark face but yours isn't bad. I can stop it at any point and get a clear identifiable image. If you do add compensation, just do it as little as you can.
Oh ok... I wasn't sure if people thought that was a good enough image or not...Thanks for your input! Appreciate it,
 
You can if you want to try to get it a little better. Won't hurt anything and can always set it back. Sometimes it's better to just get it good enough averaged for most all conditions. If you get it tuned a little better for when it's very bright behind it as yours is and then it may not be so great when it's a darker day or at the margins of whatever schedule you set, you risk introducing some motion blur and it's not as clear, etc. Take it. ; ) Lots of other stuff to mess with.