optimal settings for Starlights at night

[drbenjamin]

All

Thanks to Nayr's sleuthing out the necessary URLs, I have written a script to toggle my Dahuas settings between day and night at sunrise/sunset. I've spent a few nights trying to tweak the night settings but am still a little disappointed with stills taken from videos where I walk across the yard. Below is an example (sorry, forgot to make the peace sign )

The camera is the 5231E-Z5; I have a Univivi 6LED illuminator mounted off axis from the camera, and have tried shutter speeds locked at 1/100 with the iris anywhere from 75% to 100%, played around w/ manual IR levels. Would appreciate hearing from anyone that has dialed in their nighttime settings, so far the best stills seem to come from auto mode. Am I expecting too much or is there room for improvement?

 

[bigredfish]

You have WDR off at night right? I'm still learning myself but I've found too much WDR or DNR at night induces motion blur pretty quickly...also not sure of the distance but you may be at the edge of your IR coverage...that shadow coming in from the right may be part of it also. Even small shadows from trees etc at night play big time hell with blur. It's really not that bad though, makes me wonder if you had snapped that another 3 ft closer to the camera and out of that shadow if you would see better result?

 

[bp2008]

You should also rotate that left camera in the camera firmware (not in Blue Iris) so you get the timestamp in the correct orientation.

 

[drbenjamin]

Hi
I do have WDR off, thanks, I also reduced 3DNR to ~20. I picked a random snap but they are the same no matter my left/right position. Perhaps I need to zoom in more for ppl at this distance? I am going to try having my son stand in the FOV and tweak the focus to see if I can improve things.

bp, I tried rotating the camera in firmware but it seemed to mess up the aspect ratio; does BI auto correct for that?

 

[bp2008]

Doesn't mess up the aspect ratio in my experience. It is just another Dahua camera right?

This is one of my Dahua starlights in portrait view, rotated in camera firmware and snapshotted through Blue Iris:

 

[drbenjamin]

You're right! It works fine .. I guess what I was seeing was in the camera web browser, the image is stretched to fit whatever shape window it's displayed in . In BI it looks fine.
Thanks!