Starlight or IR for my situation?

[uglying]

I'm moving into a house in a residential area of a city, and am planning out my first ever home security setup. Based on prior reading, I figured I'd go with IR cameras rather than full color, since I don't want to have to keep floodlights on all the time.

I was looking at the cameras on empiretechs website, and there was a 180 degree camera that I thought might be useful on a particular spot, but it's starlight only. It got me thinking though, is starlight really as much of a non-started as people make it seem. The empiretech website says they only require .0005 lux, and I'm wondering if there's enough straight up light pollution taht my street will always stay above that.

Does anyone have experience with using starlight cameras in a residential (single family home) neighborhood close to an urban core, and relying on light pollution? Or know of a way I can measure the light in the area to see if it's enough, without having to just spring for an expensive camera and hope for the best?

 

[wittaj]

Starlight is simply a marketing term.

Full Color, ColorVu, etc. are simply marketing terms meaning a camera can only see visible light (these cameras cannot see infrared).

The only difference between a "regular" camera and a "full color" camera is the regular camera comes with infrared light and the full color camera comes with visible light.

But you can force a "regular" camera that can see infrared into color if you have enough light.

All cameras need light, either infrared or visible. Cameras labeled as full color cannot see infrared, so if you do not have enough light, better to go with a camera that can see infrared.

The 180 camera is a great overview camera, but will not give you IDENTIFY unless within 10-15 feet of the camera and the camera is no further than 10 feet high. It cannot see infrared, so you either need enough light or be willing to use the built-in white LED (that most here do not use as it doesn't fit with the aesthetics of a house at night).

This is an example from Reolink's marketing videos of their Starlight camera - do you see a person in this picture...yes, there is a person in this picture. This is why you cannot buy a system based on marketing terms like Starlight.... Could this provide anything useful for the police? Would this protect your home? The still picture looks great though except for the person and the blur of the vehicle... Will give you a hint - the person is in between the two columns:

Bad Boys
Bad Boys
Watcha gonna do
Watcha gonna do
When the camera can't see you


Your best bets are to get cameras on the proper MP/sensor ratios.



The sensors are small and you would be surprised how much light is needed.

See this thread that lists out with links the most commonly suggested cameras here based on distance to IDENTIFY. These represent the best overall value in terms of price and performance day and night.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[uglying]

Thanks for the detailed response, and the great links! Reading through them, I'm thinking I should start with a nice moderate resolution varifocal camera (thinking the 5442-ze 4mp) to cover the area I care about most (front porch/door), and then I can wire up other locations, place it there temporarily, and play around with the focus until I find what I need, as well as see whether the MP/sensor size combo I have needs to fall back on IR or can go color, and buy a cheaper fixed focus and/or non-IR based on that. Does that make any sort of sense? I'm thinking I'll stick to all empiretech/loryta/whatever brand just to go with quality and avoid confounding variables.

A big takeaway I'm getting is that given the same sensor size a higher resolution (MP) camera will need more light to operate effectively. Since the IR cameras have an IR flood I can leave on (I think..) does that mean it's less a concern for IR cameras than non-IR?

Really appreciating the help.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah the 5442-ZE is a great camera to start with and learn the limitations of these types of cameras and to help figure out which cameras you need for the other areas.

Yes it is much less concern for the cameras with IR leaving them on all night. Depending on the camera there will be 2 or 4 little red dots someone may see if looking directly at the camera. But most will never see them.