My WizMind X IPC-HFW71242H-Z-X Camera Showed Up Today

[Parley]

The camera in post 18 is a fixed 6mm camera. The camera in post 17 is the 2.7mm-12mm WizMind X and zoomed to 12 mm. IMHO not a whole lot of difference considering there is a 6mm difference. So, I have already moved the 6MM to the tree in the street and will use the Wizmind X at the back of the house.

 

[bigredfish]

I may swap the WizMind X camera with one in my backyard. I think it might be a better fit. I took the camera in the backyard and laid it on top of the WizMind X to see what it would look like. Here is a picture.

View attachment 163316

Much better image..

Whats with the squishing (technical term) and blurriness on the 71242H?

 

[Parley]

Much better image..

Whats with the squishing (technical term) and blurriness on the 71242H?

The aspect ratio of the 71242 is different for sure. There are places to change it, but none that are an improvement IMHO. I have corrected some of the blurriness of the 71242 by very carefully adjusting the focus along with some other items. IMHO the depth of field is not as great as say the 6mm camera. That is why I am putting it in the backyard where that issue does not arise. This camera is one of the very first WizMind X cameras out, so there may be some firmware upgrades coming out to address some of these issues. I was adjusting the nighttime image last night and it switched to black and white on me. I do not know what I did, so I just left it and went to bed. This morning the daytime was back to full color. Something over rode the color mode at night. I will deal with it in the coming days. I have been switching cameras around including my LPR's. A couple of more to go.

 

[Parley]

Here are two pictures from last evening before it got really dark. I was playing with the focus and you can see the depth of field difference. Look at the palm frond on the palm tree on the left in the photo and the license plate on the Samuri.

 

[bigredfish]

WHat Im noticing on both sets of pictures is the softness in the stone wall

 

[Parley]

WHat Im noticing on both sets of pictures is the softness in the stone wall

You are correct. The 6mm Hikvision DS-2CD2087G2-L(U) in post 18 really brings it out. That is the camera that I am replacing it with. A whole lot of musical chairs is being played with my cameras.

 

[bigredfish]

I feel your pain. I’m on camera #3 for the Gator cam.

The D2 won’t focus without being fuzzy ( I think I have version 1 with different size sensors) and the 4K-T is great in the day but I can’t do lights at night due to bugs)

Probably back to a 5442 this weekend

 

[CCTVCam]

I feel this is the inevitability of using too wide an aperture with a large sensor.

Large sensors are the way forward but Dahua need to look to size and sensitivity vs using an f1.0 aperture to get the best out of the sensor. I rather feel we've hit the point with 1/1.2" where the aperture probably needs to be somewhere between f1.2-f1.6 in order to ensure a better focus and DOF, at the sacrifice of light gathering. I feel they need to rely on sensor performance rather than aperture as we may have crossed the limits of the size of sensor that can be used with such a wide aperture and still achieve a decent dof.

So maybe better sensors are needed, or even a bit larger but with tighter apertures to get the same low light abilities as eg 4kX but with a good dof. I have to say the 4kx is good, but the dof is very very shallow and it looks as if there's the same limitation here.

 

[Parley]

^^^^ I agree with you. That is why I am putting the WizMind X camera in the back yard where the shallowness is much less of a problem.

 

[Perimeter]

Large sensors are the way forward but Dahua need to look to size and sensitivity vs using an f1.0 aperture to get the best out of the sensor. I rather feel we've hit the point with 1/1.2" where the aperture probably needs to be somewhere between f1.2-f1.6 in order to ensure a better focus and DOF, at the sacrifice of light gathering. I feel they need to rely on sensor performance rather than aperture as we may have crossed the limits of the size of sensor that can be used with such a wide aperture and still achieve a decent dof.

But I read here in these forum pages that HIKvision manages to do the job better on the same hardware specs.

 

[Parley]

But I read here in these forum pages that HIKvision manages to do the job better on the same hardware specs.

Let me just say this. The Hikvision camera mentioned above has a 1/1.2" sensor. IMHO Dahua is trying to "supercharge" a 1/1.7" sensor in this case. This WizMind X camera is the very first batch out for sale. I would highly suspect that there will be software upgrades coming out. As far as I know Hikvision does not have comparable model . I applaud Dahua for trying to upgrade the varifocal cameras.

 

[CCTVCam]

But I read here in these forum pages that HIKvision manages to do the job better on the same hardware specs.

There's a back to back comparison on here somewhere and the overall conclusion, (not sure on dof specifically), by many on here is they believe the Dahua has the edge. That's why most on here have chosen to buy the 4kx and not the GU. That said, you're free to make your own conclusions by looking at the comparison if you can find it as we all prefer different pictures.

I believe there's no magic formula to this. It's well known that the larger a sensor the shallower the dof potentially and when you use an f1.0 aperture, it's hardly surprising in outcome that dof may suffer. I'd guess that on the smaller sensors we haven't seen this before because it's something known in camera circles and most cameras use 35mm sensors with even many compacts using sensors larger than the 1.1.8" or smaller that has been typical on CCTV cameras for some time. I'd make a guess that the sensors used previously have never been large enough to exhib this and 1/1.2" is just begining to reach that threshold. There is an answer though, and that's to use a smaller aperture on the lens and rely on improved sensors to gather more light instead. There are action cameras that use a larger 1" sensor but don't have shallow dof so I would put that down to lens choice. eg the Insta 360 uses a 1" sensor but with an f3.2 lens. Unsure of it's low light performance.

There was a CCTV camera with large sensor that someone on here bought that all but saw in the total pitch black dark, but it was very very expensive (I think around $5K without a lens), and Dahua dropped it I'm guessing because of sales volume. I'm not sure what aperture it used but whilst the picture was amazing, the price wasn't!!!

 

[Perimeter]

I don't quite know how the depth of field (dof) is judged. From my naive and optimistic understanding this would be the case:
If you have two cameras with identical optics and identical sensor size, yet different in number of pixels (say 8MP vs 4MP), you should get different dof statements. The dof of the 4MP camera should be better (wider) than that of the 8MP camera. This is because at the lower end of the dof, the 4MP cam has a pixel size comparable to the blur disc size. The 4MP cannot detect the remaining blur (hence sharp) due to lack of pixel resolution while an 8MP sensor could (hence blurred). So for any given optic, an increase in sensor resolution (not size) will lead to a decrease in dof. The picture of the 8MP will likely be about as good as the 4MP picture at the lowest focal range of the 4 MP camera. But not better - the advantage of the higher resolution is lost due to blur at this distance.
That is how I understand the problem.
TL/DNR: If you increase pixel resolution, it will reveal already existing blur which was invisible at the previous resolution.

 

[Parley]

In this case the 12mm camera is rated at 12MP, but I am running it at 8MP. The 6mm fixed lens camera is also running at 8MP. They are both set to 8MP.

 

[CCTVCam]

DOF is the front to back sharpness, or should I say apparent front to back sharpness as often when zoomed in, it becomes apparent the areas front or back of the focal point aren't as sharp as what they actually appear. The point in having that front to back sharness is even if it only appears to be sharp rather than is sharp, from say the foreground to infinity, is enough to recognise something off the focal point whereas with a shallow depth of field, the same object might appear blurred even without the use of zoom.

Best explanation I can manage.

 

[Parley]

A couple of more pictures I took in the garage today, as I am trying to set this camera up for the backyard. The walls on the left and right are about the same distance. I have backed out the zoom pretty much all the way. You will notice that in the top picture the items on the left are in focus, and the items on the right are out of focus. Now in the bottom picture using auto-focus the items on the right are in focus and the items on the left are out of focus.

 

[bigredfish]

Yup

 

[Perimeter]

I made a similar observation with my zoom lens. Right and left don't focus symmetrical. As if the lens was tilted slightly inside the camera.

 

[Parley]

So, I tried to get a neutral position and this is the best I can do. The center is OK but the left and right are blurry. So, if I mount this camera in the backyard I will have to favor one side over the other.

 

[bigredfish]

I think I'd consider a return.