Night issues, can lower end Dahaus help me?

[mackmadera]

I've got a lot of lower-end cameras, all of which work well in the day. The best I have are Reolink 811-A's. I do have an EmpireTech Starlight camera which gets a tag number flawlessly.

In general, the daytime is simple. I have 4mp and 5 mp cameras that do quite well. I have enough overlapping that I'm sure to get any intruder's image well enough to assist law enforcement. At night, however, performance is terrible, even if the subject is barely moving. I get the best results where I'm got quite a bit of solar motion lights.

What should I do about the nights? Pair my cameras with powerful motion lights? Look to get a few cameras that allow me to increase shutter speed? Add additional IR illuminators? I have a lot of area to cover, but I'm thinking to just improve the night cameras near my home entrances. Any discussion of fps vs shutter speed would be very helpful.

 

[Mike A.]

Yeah, that's kind of how it goes. Day is easy. Night is where the difference comes out more.

As much as I think you'd be better off with more Dahua vs the Reolinks, I'd try cheap fixes first. You can get a decent inexpensive IR illuminator for ~$30. That should help a bunch and will help a lot down the road even with better cams. Go from there. The less expensive Dahaus don't take much of a hit as far as IR performance. Generally, they work very well. It's more color at night where you see more difference. Motion lights can work as well but have some drawbacks. Depends what you want and how it all works together.

ETA: I should clarify since inexpensive is relative and you can buy some kind of sucky low-end Dahaus too. Look by sensor size and try to go with 1.8 sensor 4MP cams if you can. Nothing on 2.x beyond 2MP cams.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^^
+1

Daytime even cheap junk 4MP cameras can do reasonably well.

If B&W is acceptable, the more IR you can put out there the better.

I just installed a new 200ft Tendelux and it lights up the street nicely.
Note the 5241 Z12 LPR camera just below this illuminator is also running its onboard IR
View attachment HOAEntrP2P_ch2_20240628031349_20240628031403.mp4
















But both day and night usually require a few cameras working together, Overview like above,, and zoomed into choke points for positive ID
(50ft using a 5442-Z4 - IR on 100% plus added IR from an overview camera)
View attachment Home_ch8_20240616211748_20240616211758.mp4

 

[mackmadera]

^^^^^
+1

Daytime even cheap junk 4MP cameras can do reasonably well.

If B&W is acceptable, the more IR you can put out there the better.

I just installed a new 200ft Tendelux and it lights up the street nicely.
Note the 5241 Z12 LPR camera just below this illuminator is also running its onboard IR

But both day and night usually require a few cameras working together, Overview like above,, and zoomed into choke points for positive ID
(50ft using a 5442-Z4 - IR on 100% plus added IR from an overview camera)

The first thing for me to do is to install my motion lights, which I have quite a few laying around. If that doesn't satisfy, my next step is an IR illuminator. Trying to make it work with a hodgepodge of cheap 8 mp and 4 mp cameras.

 

[wittaj]

Sadly folks have shown that you will spend more on getting enough external infrared to make a reolink work than it would be to buy new cameras. The reolinks simply need a TON of light.

This chart was developed based on the collective input of many members here with real world experience with many/all of the different cameras out there. If you want good night-time performance, you need cameras with MP/sensor ratio in the green:



You also will see a price correlation between those in red (cheaper) versus those in green (more expensive than those in red).

Generally the larger the sensor, the more light that can be captured per pixel.

I have a 4MP and 2MP on the same 1/2.8" sensor and the picture quality is quite different between the two and the 2MP kicks it's butt at night.

My 4MP on the 1/1.8" sensor performs better than my 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor. Even though they are both ideal MP/sensor ratio cameras, the larger sensor has the advantage.

In most instances, you want to get a camera that will perform at your location for the worse situation, which for most of us is at night when it is dark and there is little to no light. If a camera performs at night, it is easier to tweak settings to make it work during the day than it is the other way around.

My 2MP cameras outperform my neighbors 4K (8MP) cameras....why....because they are both on the same size sensor.

So if low light capability is what one is looking for, you want to be looking for cameras that are on the ideal MP/sensor ratio.


See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

 

[mackmadera]

Sadly folks have shown that you will spend more on getting enough external infrared to make a reolink work than it would be to buy new cameras. The reolinks simply need a TON of light.

This chart was developed based on the collective input of many members here with real world experience with many/all of the different cameras out there. If you want good night-time performance, you need cameras with MP/sensor ratio in the green:

View attachment 197355

You also will see a price correlation between those in red (cheaper) versus those in green (more expensive than those in red).

Generally the larger the sensor, the more light that can be captured per pixel.

I have a 4MP and 2MP on the same 1/2.8" sensor and the picture quality is quite different between the two and the 2MP kicks it's butt at night.

My 4MP on the 1/1.8" sensor performs better than my 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor. Even though they are both ideal MP/sensor ratio cameras, the larger sensor has the advantage.

In most instances, you want to get a camera that will perform at your location for the worse situation, which for most of us is at night when it is dark and there is little to no light. If a camera performs at night, it is easier to tweak settings to make it work during the day than it is the other way around.

My 2MP cameras outperform my neighbors 4K (8MP) cameras....why....because they are both on the same size sensor.

So if low light capability is what one is looking for, you want to be looking for cameras that are on the ideal MP/sensor ratio.


See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

Can you point me to a source for a decent camera?

 

[wittaj]

See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

 

[mackmadera]

Picked up two 2 mp 1/2.8 cameras today. I played with lighting tonight without that much success, but I have many iterations to parse. I do have quite a bit of footage for someone walking from my gate to my house. If they haven't covered their face and they stop momentarily, I think the tapes will be good to identify them. I'm going to keep experimenting with various cameras/lighting/IR emitters.

 

[wittaj]

Now that you have the cams, time to take them off default settings.

In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.

Start with:

H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

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 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (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 or white light.

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 static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, 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 16.67ms (but certainly not 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. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.

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 if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.