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 forum favorite here @EMPIRETECANDY , but this post will put it all in one place where we can point a NOOB to. The cameras I am highlighting were purchased from @EMPIRETECANDY
Almost every big box store, consumer grade cameras and all-in-one-box kits come with either 2.8mm or 3.6mm cameras. I started with the four 2.8mm camera box kit system and I was like "I can place one on each corner of the house and see my whole property and the whole neighborhood." A newbie loves the wide angle "I can see the whole neighborhood" of the 2.8mm fixed wide angle lens. I LOVED IT WHEN I PUT IT UP. I could see everything that would be blocked looking out the windows.
It is easy to get lured in to thinking the wide angle "see the whole neighborhood" because you are watching it and you see a neighbor go by and you are like "Look at that I can tell that is Heather out walking." and "Yeah I can tell our neighbor 4 down just passed by". Or you watch back the video of you walking around and are like "yeah I can tell that is me".
Little do we realize how much WE can identify a known person just by hair style, clothing, walking pace, gait, etc.
Then one day the door checker comes by. Total stranger. Totally useless video other than what time the door checking happened.
Then you realize that this wide-angle see the whole neighborhood comes at a cost and that cost is not being able to IDENTIFY who did it. These 2.8mm wide angle cameras are great overview cameras or to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet of the camera. At 40 feet out you need a different camera.
I am going to demonstrate the limitations of thinking the 2.8 or 3.6mm camera is the ideal camera for every situation. Here is my neighborhood, and it is like most neighborhoods – ¼-1/2 acre lot subdivision we can find in anytown USA. No street lights, just house, porch, and lamp post lighting. But a 2.8mm camera on each corner of the house lets me see my whole property, so let's see how it does with trying to IDENTIFY someone on the public sidewalk.
Here is my next door neighbor out for his usual 11pm jog. The distance is 90 feet (I blacked out most of the wide angle image to help focus the eyes to the person) I chose this clip because he is jogging (and said I could use him LOL), and this demonstrates how you can capture clear images of motion at night instead of the blurry images we often see from big box store cameras or even the examples The Hookup and other YouTuber's shows in their videos (clearly not dialed in and probably on default/auto settings).
I will preface this with I do not have enough light to run these cameras in color, so I had to force them into color and spent a lot of time tweaking each parameter to get the most out of it in color. I am running right at the brink of it going to crappy motion blur/ghosting and running higher parameters than we would recommend. I can get crisper images in B/W with infrared and do run a few cams that way, but I prefer color if possible.
This is from my 5442-ZE (now known as 54IR-ZE) set to 3.6mm. This is a 4MP camera that many consider king of the hill. It gives me a great overview of my entire front yard. I can tell that is my neighbor. But at 90 feet you are not going to IDENTIFY. But when someone gets withing 10-15 feet, it is then the right camera for IDENTIFY. You can see there is no motion blur, but there is blur due to the distance. But this would be useless to identify a stranger, but I can tell it is my neighbor.
But then people think we can digital zoom, so let’s do that.
Nope, doesn’t work, especially at night. A pixelated mess as the program tries to fill in missing pieces as you digital zoom. If you want to see things far away, you need optical zoom, digital zoom only works in the movies and TV...And the optical zoom is done real time - for a varifocal it is a set it and forget it. You cannot go to recorded video and optically zoom in later, at that point it is digital zoom, and the sensors on these cameras are so small which is why digital zoom doesn't work very well after the fact.
Only on TV and in the movies do we see this kind of digital zoom and clean images LOL:
So how do we get clean captures at longer distances….well that would be with more focal length. Which means a different camera.
Here is an image taken within seconds of the image above, except this time it is with the 5241E-Z12E varifocal with an optical range from 5.3mm to 64mm. This is a 2MP camera. At this distance, the focal length is set to about 54mm.
Notice that this is at night, in color, with basically no blur of a person running. This image could be used by the police to identify a person (the .bmp files are clearer but also larger in size, so I opted for a smaller file size that still gets the point across).
So yes, one can obtain images at night that are not a blur. It comes down to having a camera that allows the user to set parameters (and the camera adheres to), dialing in of the camera to the field of view, and the proper focal length for the distance to be covered.
Here is another great thread put together showcasing how @Ri22o went from thinking 2.8mm cams to testing with a varifocal and recognizing what we say about optical zoom to IDENTIFY people. Most of us got there thru trial and error and as such don't have it documented like he has, so this is another great thread to review!
ipcamtalk.com
Here is another great thread put together by @simonx314 showing 4 different cameras with 125mm, 64mm, 32mm, and 2.8mm focal lengths for a subject at 50 feet and demonstrating how well a 2MP can perform once you get beyond the IDENTIFY distance of a camera, regardless of the MP the camera has.
ipcamtalk.com
I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a forum favorite here @EMPIRETECANDY , but this post will put it all in one place where we can point a NOOB to. The cameras I am highlighting were purchased from @EMPIRETECANDY
Almost every big box store, consumer grade cameras and all-in-one-box kits come with either 2.8mm or 3.6mm cameras. I started with the four 2.8mm camera box kit system and I was like "I can place one on each corner of the house and see my whole property and the whole neighborhood." A newbie loves the wide angle "I can see the whole neighborhood" of the 2.8mm fixed wide angle lens. I LOVED IT WHEN I PUT IT UP. I could see everything that would be blocked looking out the windows.
It is easy to get lured in to thinking the wide angle "see the whole neighborhood" because you are watching it and you see a neighbor go by and you are like "Look at that I can tell that is Heather out walking." and "Yeah I can tell our neighbor 4 down just passed by". Or you watch back the video of you walking around and are like "yeah I can tell that is me".
Little do we realize how much WE can identify a known person just by hair style, clothing, walking pace, gait, etc.
Then one day the door checker comes by. Total stranger. Totally useless video other than what time the door checking happened.
Then you realize that this wide-angle see the whole neighborhood comes at a cost and that cost is not being able to IDENTIFY who did it. These 2.8mm wide angle cameras are great overview cameras or to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet of the camera. At 40 feet out you need a different camera.
I am going to demonstrate the limitations of thinking the 2.8 or 3.6mm camera is the ideal camera for every situation. Here is my neighborhood, and it is like most neighborhoods – ¼-1/2 acre lot subdivision we can find in anytown USA. No street lights, just house, porch, and lamp post lighting. But a 2.8mm camera on each corner of the house lets me see my whole property, so let's see how it does with trying to IDENTIFY someone on the public sidewalk.
Here is my next door neighbor out for his usual 11pm jog. The distance is 90 feet (I blacked out most of the wide angle image to help focus the eyes to the person) I chose this clip because he is jogging (and said I could use him LOL), and this demonstrates how you can capture clear images of motion at night instead of the blurry images we often see from big box store cameras or even the examples The Hookup and other YouTuber's shows in their videos (clearly not dialed in and probably on default/auto settings).
I will preface this with I do not have enough light to run these cameras in color, so I had to force them into color and spent a lot of time tweaking each parameter to get the most out of it in color. I am running right at the brink of it going to crappy motion blur/ghosting and running higher parameters than we would recommend. I can get crisper images in B/W with infrared and do run a few cams that way, but I prefer color if possible.
This is from my 5442-ZE (now known as 54IR-ZE) set to 3.6mm. This is a 4MP camera that many consider king of the hill. It gives me a great overview of my entire front yard. I can tell that is my neighbor. But at 90 feet you are not going to IDENTIFY. But when someone gets withing 10-15 feet, it is then the right camera for IDENTIFY. You can see there is no motion blur, but there is blur due to the distance. But this would be useless to identify a stranger, but I can tell it is my neighbor.
But then people think we can digital zoom, so let’s do that.
Nope, doesn’t work, especially at night. A pixelated mess as the program tries to fill in missing pieces as you digital zoom. If you want to see things far away, you need optical zoom, digital zoom only works in the movies and TV...And the optical zoom is done real time - for a varifocal it is a set it and forget it. You cannot go to recorded video and optically zoom in later, at that point it is digital zoom, and the sensors on these cameras are so small which is why digital zoom doesn't work very well after the fact.
Only on TV and in the movies do we see this kind of digital zoom and clean images LOL:
So how do we get clean captures at longer distances….well that would be with more focal length. Which means a different camera.
Here is an image taken within seconds of the image above, except this time it is with the 5241E-Z12E varifocal with an optical range from 5.3mm to 64mm. This is a 2MP camera. At this distance, the focal length is set to about 54mm.
Notice that this is at night, in color, with basically no blur of a person running. This image could be used by the police to identify a person (the .bmp files are clearer but also larger in size, so I opted for a smaller file size that still gets the point across).
So yes, one can obtain images at night that are not a blur. It comes down to having a camera that allows the user to set parameters (and the camera adheres to), dialing in of the camera to the field of view, and the proper focal length for the distance to be covered.
Here is another great thread put together showcasing how @Ri22o went from thinking 2.8mm cams to testing with a varifocal and recognizing what we say about optical zoom to IDENTIFY people. Most of us got there thru trial and error and as such don't have it documented like he has, so this is another great thread to review!
"I want 2.8mm cameras everywhere to see everything..." - This is why you need specific FOVs with purposeful focal lengths.
I have gained a lot of knowledge since I signed up and wanted to share my experience and examples of improvements and changes for others who are coming from a "I want 2.8mm cameras everywhere to see everything" system mentality. My ongoing "build/looking for advice" thread can be found here...
Here is another great thread put together by @simonx314 showing 4 different cameras with 125mm, 64mm, 32mm, and 2.8mm focal lengths for a subject at 50 feet and demonstrating how well a 2MP can perform once you get beyond the IDENTIFY distance of a camera, regardless of the MP the camera has.
Side-by-side comparison of Dahua Z4, Z12, mini PTZ and a Reolink.
Here is a side-by-side comparison between the popular Dahua Z12 and Z4 varifocal cameras, Dahua's new SD4A425DB mini PTZ, and a 4k Reolink. I will use the Z12 and the auto-tracking PTZ to watch the public walking trail next to my yard, and move the Z4 and Reolink elsewhere, but while all four...
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