Test video from my IPC-T5442T-ZE ...

[user8963]

But at 150 feet out at 12mm focal length, it will be wide regardless of sensor size and still not able to IDENTIFY at that distance.

yeah.. and what you already wrote earlier...

having more zoom does not mean having more light in far. most variofocal cameras have shitty ir leds which are never be able to reach 100ft..

there is only one model which is able to do it.. laser ptz... because these models can adjust the beam of the IR light.. not sure if normal ptz can do it too..

 

[Left Coast Geek]

But at 150 feet out at 12mm focal length, it will be wide regardless of sensor size and still not able to IDENTIFY at that distance.

sure, but I'm good with just seeing they are there at the extreme, and having 'recognize' at around 60 feet. in both my videos its around 100 or 120 feet where i turn around. 150 feet is the road behind that, which I block out from motion detect anyways, as there's far too much traffic, it would be recording constantly.

 

[elliottwe]

well, without the WDR off, the far side of the driveway is almost completely black, with it around 30-50, I can see details in the shadows, and tahts in B&W IR mode. tonight I'll play around some more with the settings once its dark. one thing, I dunno what BLC or HLC or SSA are, I know WDR stands for Wide Dynamic Range, and have used that some in terrestrial photography. Also, what is EIS on the Picture screen ? EIS seems to make the picture zoom in a bit more, is it some sort of image stabilization? its off.

that blacked out region on the lower left is not the roof, its a fence around the patio thats not connected to the house, and a dog house thats on the outside of that fence. I can't mount the cameras any lower or that fence obscures too much of the view, and I can't mount the cameras ON that fence or I'd have to 'air bridge' the ethernet cable, plus that fence is only 6' high., so the camera woudl be too low. the chimney mount spot is about 12 feet off the ground, the driveway slopes gently uphill towards the road. My goal with an added illuminator would be to NOT hit the trailer, I want to paint only the area under the trees on the far side of the driveway.

I'd really like a camera with an even longer lens than 12mm but did not find one, at least not in Empire's catalog, and ideally one that has its IR illuminator focused on that narrower cone.

Amazon.com

The IPC-B5442E-Z4E might work for you.

 

[Left Coast Geek]

Amazon.com

The IPC-B5442E-Z4E might work for you.

yeah, i just found that Z4E ... are there any non-zoom cams with that sort of focal length? I 'd hope those, at least, would have a more focused IR beam ?

I still need to find a IR 'spotlight' thats like a 20 or 30 degree spot with reasonably even lighting across that cone. something I can mount off to the left out of the field of view, aiming at those woods along the edge of the driveway.

 

[wittaj]

yeah.. and what you already wrote earlier...

having more zoom does not mean having more light in far. most variofocal cameras have shitty ir leds which are never be able to reach 100ft..

there is only one model which is able to do it.. laser ptz... because these models can adjust the beam of the IR light.. not sure if normal ptz can do it too..

Exactly. The laser is the exception. You can control intensity of near/far IR, but not adjust the angles. And most IR in real world situations is half the spec'd distance claim.

 

[user8963]

I still need to find a IR 'spotlight' thats like a 20 or 30 degree spot with reasonably even lighting across that cone. something I can mount off to the left out of the field of view, aiming at those woods along the edge of the driveway.

i dont think that IR spots will help "alot" in your situation.

there might be a problem which you dont want to share with us... i think you try to cover ir reflections with your "black boxes" on your picture. but your camera dont care about your black boxes. reflections from ir-light will have a huge impact on your picture. thats why you have to use all your "wrong" settings like wdr etc.... you cannot trick the camera with software black boxes LOL ..

 

[Left Coast Geek]

well, more light on the darker parts of the picture should help a lot.

fyi, my blackout is using the overlay in the camera, NOT in blueirtis, for what thats worth,b ut I believe you re exposure. I'll have to play around with making a shield for the on-camera flood, but that likely will glare back into the lens :-/

also i've found many 'black' things are quite light in IR

 

[Left Coast Geek]

...
I still need to find a IR 'spotlight' thats like a 20 or 30 degree spot with reasonably even lighting across that cone. something I can mount off to the left out of the field of view, aiming at those woods along the edge of the driveway.

hmm, found this one. Amazon.com : Infrared Illuminator Microlight IR Helios P4 30/130 30deg Narrow Angle up to 300ft Night Vision Outdoor IP67 12-24 V AC/DC : Electronics

 

[Left Coast Geek]

oooh, maybe I should mount a flood on the TRAILER, out of the field of view of the camera, and aimed at those woods on the left. muahahaha. trailer has 12V dual golf cart batts, AND solar charging.

except any such mount would have to be removable for travel, and of course wouldn't be there when we're traveling.

 

[Left Coast Geek]

ok, trying another set of parameters. lets see...
h.264, 15 fps, 60 frames per iframe, 8192kbit/s video.
manual shutter: 0-10ms, gain 0-75
exposure comp: 85
3D NR On, 3D=50, 2D=0
gamma: 100, Backlit: OFF


this is grittier than the previous, but shows ok facial detail at 40-50 feet, and you can certainly see what I'm doing even at 60-100 feet were its all a bit ghosty. ghosting from traverse travel is minimal.

oh geez, ignore the timestamp, hah, when I reset the cam after the latest firmware, I forgot to set the timezone and DST dates, and set it to use my local NTP service.

 

[user8963]

too much blurr ... i would try to reduce gain and raise shutter... also 2D = 0 is not good, because you already have noise on your trailer.

so you can try

15fps, iframe 15, 8192 (you can use VBR if you cannot hold the data)
2D NR ... try 20
exposure comp 0 or max 20 ... just try... but 85 is too much
gain: max 60-65
shutter... try 0- ... 12.5 , 14.2857 , 16.66
brightness 50
contrast 50

also reduce gamma, i think its the cause of overexposure on face.. its too much... try 70-80

 

[Left Coast Geek]

i'd rather have sharp slightly noisy than the really blurry stuff the 2D NR is showing me. I started with both at zero, and turned one up 10 at a time, then the other, then tried combinations. To adjust the exposure settings, I'll turn the noise reduction way down so the image is pretty noisy, then try and optimize the exposure, then bring the noise reduction back up just enough so it looks good.

re 1/100 exposure? longer tends to increase motion blur. I wanted to see how good I could get it with 1/100, i'l probably revert to 1/60 or 1/50, as thats a whole stop more light.

 

[Left Coast Geek]

oh, when I had the iframe set to 15, same as the FPS, it looked awful, it was pumping from crisp to fuzzy every second.
when I bumped the iframe count up to 60 (every 4 seconds at 15 fps), the pumping completely stopped. now, I was using the h.265 encoder, and thats a much more complex codec than h.264, i don't doubt the camera has a buggy implementation.

hah, an aside, I had disabled substreams on all my cams, cuz I hated the way the previews looked on my 24" screen. I noted that when I ran my default view of all 7 cameras, the CPU on BlueIris was up around 70%, and this is a core i7-6700.... I enabled substreams on all my lower priority cameras, the reolinks and hikvisions, and left the two dahuas with just main stream, it seems to be working well, and CPUY time is now 20-25% with all 7 displayed, and if I full screen one of the other cameras, it switches to full res within a second

 

[user8963]

looks like you are resistant to everything.
blurr is not only related to shutter,

if you are happy with your settings ..then

one would not use iframe 2x fps, another one uses 4 , next one buys reolink .....

so the question is. if you know anything already, why are you asking ?

 

[Left Coast Geek]

so the question is. if you know anything already, why are you asking ?

well, i'm learning as I go, but so far, I'm liking sebastian's settings over yours, nothing personal. I'm not done yet, this is an incremental process. Part of this is just the challenge of seeing what I can tease out of this $200 camera.

 

[user8963]

I'm liking sebastian's settings over yours

i think you will never understand it. there are some known-good "baseline" settings which you set and try to change some other settings to get a better picture.
everything is somehow connected.

also advices must not fit to your scene.. also your brain can trick you. you are not in a hollywood movie. the aim is to identify someone not to get the less blurr footage with any details washed out.
you might think your picture "looks" better... yeah... with 4x iframe interval there might be less noise/crisp in live view maybe @sebastiantombs is using 8x iframe interval ... maybe it will give you a better picture ?

there is one point you cannot get a better picture without adding external light.

Part of this is just the challenge of seeing what I can tease out of this $200 camera.

if your goal is to squeeze out as much noise/blurr/overexposure you can, then continue

 

[Left Coast Geek]

...there is one point you cannot get a better picture without adding external light.
...

that, I think, is my next step.

 

[bajrangibha04]

I have a oem hikvision nitecolor like you describe, I hated the white LEDs, way too bright even turned down low. its now on the pile of spare cameras on my office floor. free fire for pc jiofi.local.html

 

[Left Coast Geek]

I have a oem hikvision nitecolor like you describe, I hated the white LEDs, way too bright even turned down low. its now on the pile of spare cameras on my office floor.

hahaahahah. me too.

 

[Left Coast Geek]

well, first try at setting up a spot illuminator to light those back woods, and I wish it had a dimmer. I'll have to play around with using some black tape as an aperture to better balance it. this 30 degree spot is about 60 feet from those woods, while the camera is about 110 feet



the Microlight stuff is pretty good. I got the 30 degree 7W one I linked above. kinda feel like I'm going to want a flood for the foreground, pretty soon this is going to be like stage lighting, heh, you never have too many lights.