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.
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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.