New cam, night performance tips

[nonono]

Getting there. I feel like I had settings near this a few nights ago and it was just a black blob of a human. I'll go do a quick walk and post it.

 

[samplenhold]

Instead of using a range, just for grins, try something like this:

 

[samplenhold]

Also make sure you have bit rate set to CBR and at least 8192 Kb/S.

 

[nonono]

Here's the walk from @wittaj 's numbers. Unfortunately, a blob. 1/120 didn't make much of a difference. I'm always CBR 8192

 

[samplenhold]

Is this a turret or a bullet? What is the firmware version?

 

[wittaj]

The difference though is this is a backlit condition, whereas that person walking thru on the previous had the floodlight come on behind the camera that provided light towards the subject walking towards it.

So even though you have a lot of light, you have sometimes motion lights come on, sometimes they don't, so it makes for a challenging scene.

I guess the moral of the story is now slowly raise the numbers until you see issues. You might be able to get gain to 65 or so before it starts the see-thru

What if you tried B/W with infrared - would that get the IDENTIFY?

 

[nonono]

turret

 

[nonono]

The difference though is this is a backlit condition, whereas that person walking thru on the previous had the floodlight come on behind the camera that provided light towards the subject walking towards it.

So even though you have a lot of light, you have sometimes motion lights come on, sometimes they don't, so it makes for a challenging scene.

I guess the moral of the story is now slowly raise the numbers until you see issues. You might be able to get gain to 65 or so before it starts the see-thru

What if you tried B/W with infrared - would that get the IDENTIFY?

IR might. I'll play with a few versions of the above. And it is a challenging light situation. It occurs to me now that maybe I should just pair these cams with visible motion lighting to grab a clean image. It's trivial to hang lights off this building as it's a garage and being in an alley no one will be bothered by motion lighting.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah motion lights do nothing to scare anyone.

There is a member here @icpilot that is getting coverage in an alley like you, but without your light.

Since I tagged him, maybe he can offer some suggestions as well as he has already been down this path with covering an alleyway that has had lots of issues.

Take a look at this thread and watch them jump with an audible alarm LOL

Burgaria Interruptus

Burglary Interrupted .... Once again having trouble uploading the video file, so here it is from my OneDrive .... AlleyWestVF.20220210_141400_1.mp4 Gallant dude leaving his girl in the dust like that - just one of the attributes to be expected from a petty thief.

ipcamtalk.com

 

[looktall]

this is a backlit condition

This is the killer in this case.
Get some light pointing down the lane in the same direction as the camera view and it will make a huge difference.

 

[Mike A.]

^ This. Or go IR. You've got a lot of reflective surfaces that will light that area up well.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

I think the 54 series better use with the IR if not really lots of light in the night.

For the street camera can use the IPC-Color4K-T , IPC-Color4K-X, these cams are the canera killer for the street.
Even without LED illumination, the camera will do bit good job than the 54 series for full color pics.

 

[JDreaming]

Agree with Andy, If you don't mind the LED on at night, Color4K-T or IPC-Color4K-X will be great for this spot for full color videos at night.

 

[CCTVCam]

Thanks for the tips. I got a decent static image with a 25ms shutter, 50 gain, and 50 WDR. I'm worried that I jacked WDR too high for motion, but I'll run it for a few nights to see if it's acceptable before I get out there to hang better lights. One mitigating factor is that in order to show up on this camera someone would either be a known person or have to pass by some other cameras with much better ID lighting, so maybe some blur is acceptable for better "day-to-day what's going" on wide angle performance.

View attachment 153142

I'd mount a decorative light for this camera on the far side of the post to the left. The post will shield it from the cameras view and it should light the seating area and the area further away from the steps better. I don't think it needs to be massive, you can get 10w led bulbs that pump out 1,000 lumens these days, so not a huge cost to have them on a dusk to dawn sensor. Just make sure any bulb has a colour temperature rating of cool white or daylight, but ideally an actual temperature of @ 5,500 - 6500K (usually stated on the box or tech specs on thew website). If you still don't have enough light, you can always go up in bulb size from there. Another way would be to put a series of small lights in the canopy looking down.

If you don't want lights on all the time, you could mount mini floods in th canopy eg again try 10w 1,000 lumen (note not all 10w make 1,000 lumen), to start and attach them to a sensor. Set the light when activated to latch on for at least 5 mins to the camera has plenty of time to capture anything before the light go out (hopefully they'd retrigger but it all depends on the persons vs sensor position and whether they take the lights out). Note one issue with this approach, there will be a slight delay in the camera adapting from dark to light when the lights switch. This may cause a second or two of unusable recording.