my driveway lighting situation

NorthBendDave

NorthBendDave

Pulling my weight
May 27, 2021
127
159
Washington, USA
I have 2 4 MP cameras (Lorex) with crossing views over my driveway. I have an LED driveway light between both lights. There is also a street light out there to the right.
First pic is normal night lighting. Second is a Thief driving away with my neighbors tools. I zoomed in on the thief to try to get more detail, but failed.
All of my settings are default. What can I do to get better pics from my lighting/cameras?
I intend to put a varifocal IPC-T5442T-ZE turret in 1 of the spots.
 

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NorthBendDave said:
I have 2 4 MP cameras (Lorex) with crossing views over my driveway. I have an LED driveway light between both lights. There is also a street light out there to the right.
First pic is normal night lighting. Second is a Thief driving away with my neighbors tools. I zoomed in on the thief to try to get more detail, but failed.
All of my settings are default. What can I do to get better pics from my lighting/cameras?
I intend to put a varifocal IPC-T5442T-ZE turret in 1 of the spots.
Click to expand...
for starters.... go to manual settings--- set shutter speed as short as you can-- 1/100 or shorter (if possible) would be best. turn off backlight features (WDR, etc) and carefully adjust gain-- too much introduces a ton of noise. Of course there is noise reduction--- but that tends to introduce ghosting and/or bad motion blur. You have to find the sweet spot for your specific lighting environment amongst all those settings. Don't be fooled by a pretty & clean still image--- it will have little to do with the quality of image for a moving object like the truck in your pic!

Good luck!! Others may chime in with more specific instructions that are better than my suggestions--- listen to them!! There are some serious experts floating around here!! :thumb:
 
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Light is certainly a much needed friend to these types of cameras! Auto/default settings rarely produce the best results, especially at night.

And the common 2.8 or 3.6mm lens popular on Lorex will not IDENTIFY a stranger much past 10 feet at night.

To be able to IDENTIFY further out, you need optical zoom. Digital zoom only works on TV and in the movies.

In my opinion, shutter and gain are the two most important and then base the others off of it.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-30 (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night image results in Casper during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

So if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 30ms as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And when if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible. HLC at 50, unless for LPR, will certainly degrade the image with motion.
 
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Since digital zoom only works on the TV and in movies, we need optical zoom.

Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well.
  • 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera (but don't expect to IDENTIFY a stranger 40 feet out)
  • 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
  • 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
  • 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
  • 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
  • 49225 PTZ - great PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.
You need to get the correct camera for the area trying to be covered. A 2.8mm to IDENTIFY someone 40 feet away is the wrong camera regardless of how good the camera is. A 2.8mm camera to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet is a good choice OR it is an overview camera to see something happened but not be able to identify who.
 
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Is your purpose to have surveillance of your own property or have surveillance for you neighbors too? If the latter, like @looney2ns said you need another camera to watch the street with an appropriate focal length or, better yet, zoom. Getting the cameras off of auto in all cases is critical as @sdkid and @wittaj said.

I have a 2231 that watches our east yard. It is dialed in as best as I can get it, but the scene is foreground lit by a streetlight. My neighbor had his log splitter stolen and asked me if I had anything on video. That camera captured the vehicle coming in and leaving with the log splitter. Even though it's a varifocal and zoomed all the way in, there was not enough detail to get a plate or really solid description. It did help him with his insurance company and the police report though so I was able to help a little at least.
 
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Also of note... you have to take into consideration 2 different night time lighting profiles. One with security lights off, one with security lights on.
Example: I have small wattage LED outdoor lights for general night time (2 carriage lights and 1 post lantern). I also had a motion detection LED floodlight that was UBER bright that really messed up my images at night when triggered. Could not find a way to have 2 different profiles so ended up leaving the LED floodlight on all night. Big difference between little light 50' distant from front door to lighting up the neighborhood :)
LPR night time picture.jpgstart.jpg
 
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Thanks for the replies. The thief photo was to show to the cops, so I just shot the pic with my phone. Yes, he said it was useless.
How do you access the camera settings to adjust shutter speed, etc? I do not see them remotely accessing my Network recorder. Individually plug into my network or somehow through the recorder?
My noob is definitely showing.
 
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