The Typical picture of a Perp on Nextdoor-type Apps with Consumer Grade Cameras like Ring, Nest, Arlo, Canary, Wyze, etc.

The Automation Guy said:
How about this one. Broad daylight and good camera placement, but still can't read a license plate from 15' away! OP has stated that they tried to zoom in and read the plate, but no letters are readable.

I'm sure they loved the wide angle view that the camera provided - right up until the moment that they really needed to see something other than the woods.

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Honest question, how much does the angle matter here? It looks more like the camera quality isn't the greatest so things are washed out. The OP said the letters are not readable because of the glare not because of resolution or anything. I'm sure a similar specced camera but with a narrow view would have yielded the same results no?
 
hajalie24 said:
Honest question, how much does the angle matter here? It looks more like the camera quality isn't the greatest so things are washed out. The OP said the letters are not readable because of the glare not because of resolution or anything. I'm sure a similar specced camera but with a narrow view would have yielded the same results no?
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There isn't a clear image of the letters during the entire capture and the car is at many different angles to the camera. The sun is well to the right and behind the camera (the shadow of the tree is pointing towards the sun). If it was just glare, you could read the plate as the car came into the scene and started to turn around when the plate was pointed to the left and therefore about 90 degrees off the sun.
 
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The Automation Guy said:
There isn't a clear image of the letters during the entire capture and the car is at many different angles to the camera. The sun is well to the right and behind the camera (the shadow of the tree is pointing towards the sun). If it was just glare, you could read the plate as the car came into the scene and started to turn around when the plate was pointed to the left.
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Okay, how much of this is due to it wide angle versus just being a shitty camera? I.e. do you think a camera with the same specs but different angle lens would have caught it?
 
hajalie24 said:
Okay, how much of this is due to it wide angle versus just being a shitty camera? I.e. do you think a camera with the same specs but different angle lens would have caught it?
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Hard to tell because we have no idea what camera is being used here. But generally speaking even shitty cameras can produce decent daytime captures with good detail and this capture missed the intended purpose of the camera. I would actually guess that this is a 4k camera because that's what most (shitty) consumer grade cameras are. So while this means if the situation had occurred at night we probably would have seen an extremely blurry/ghosting capture, it should have captured a good daytime image with enough detail to see a license plate that close up. That's why I'm chalking it up to improper field of view more than anything.

You always need to keep your primary goals in mind when installing a camera. I'm sure the owner probably put this camera up to cover their shed and driveway for this exact possibility. However, because those objects only account for about 1/3 of the total field of view, they are wasting 2/3 of the available pixels on non-important objects. That means the level of detail on the important objects is 66% less than it could have been if they had installed a camera with an appropriate field of view that covered their desired objects and little else.

Now it is true that if this camera was set up with the proper settings, the capture likely would have been better too. I'm sure that the owner left everything on auto however and called it a day. But I'd still argue that a camera with the proper field of view would have provided much sharper more detailed images and would therefore have a fighting chance of getting the license plate and perhaps even detailed enough footage to identify the perp.

Edit - I'll also note that this is one time where I think the camera is actually mounted TOO LOW. There is little advantage to mounting it this low and because it is so low, the car ends up blocking the camera from seeing the perp. Mounting it higher (above head height) would allow the camera to "see over the top of the car" and therefore be able to capture at least some footage of the perp as he walks behind the car (as viewed from the camera's perspective). Because the camera isn't suppose to capture things really close to the camera, being mounted higher would not be an issue.
 
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hajalie24 said:
Okay, how much of this is due to it wide angle versus just being a shitty camera? I.e. do you think a camera with the same specs but different angle lens would have caught it?
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During the day time, even some of the crappiest cameras can do ok. At night is a different story. Heck even my cheap Night Owl analog cameras could capture a plate that close if in the daytime if the vehicle was stopped or moving slow enough.

But then there are some cameras that just suck regardless of the amount of light.

This is probably a typical consumer grade 2.8mm camera, but looks like it is probably a wifi camera and cannot provide the required data bandwidth to produce a clean picture.

Wifi and cameras do not go together.

The car got close enough to the camera (within 10 feet), and was slow enough and basically stopped for a moment that most consumer grade cameras should have been able to read the plate.

And then of course, even if it were a quality camera, at the distance from the camera to the stuff being stolen is too far of a distance for a wide angle lens to IDENTIFY with, regardless of whether this camera was higher up or not.
 
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hajalie24 said:
Honest question, how much does the angle matter here? It looks more like the camera quality isn't the greatest so things are washed out. The OP said the letters are not readable because of the glare not because of resolution or anything. I'm sure a similar specced camera but with a narrow view would have yielded the same results no?
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Hi @hajalie24

Please feel free to copy the image and text and post here .. not all of us have a nextdoor account to help answer the question ...
 
Oh wait it gets better LOL....here are some comments in the post and another PIC - what great picture quality.

This is the same car the thieves drove that tried to break into my neighbors work truck early Sunday morning in the Kenmare subdivision. One driver and one jumped out.

1650562324758.png

And I love the comments:

It was hard to read the tag number but we have a police officer in our subdivision. I think he’s going to try to see if he can read it. Thanks!

Not sure if this will help at all, but the best contrast of the plate is ~4 seconds into the video you show. Where the plate is in the shade of the tree. Your copy maybe better than the one you posted, so might blow up that frame. The frame you show is where the plate is in the sun. The camera sensor saturates as it is too bright and there is little detail.

You might be able to get the tag number if you can enhance the pic
 
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@hajalie24 You pose very good questions. Those are the kind of questions that shows you are really thinking about how to get the best money shot from a cam. Those kinds of thoughts are rarely posed by the owners of these consumer grade cams like ring, nest, arlo, etc. They just plug-n-play them without any thought of how to position them.

Others above have given quite good answers to your questions. I agree with them. If the cam was better positioned, was not such a wide-angle cam, had another cam to help out, then maybe they would have gotten a better cap that provides good info. But we will never know. The user did not think through the positioning of the cam, that is for sure. I doubt if they ever thought about what it is they were trying to capture and probably never walked the view and looked at that video.

The problem I see is those that have an incident happen and do not get a good video but don't do anything to fix the situation. Case in point, the guy across the street from me that had a shitty cap from his Ring cam and bitched about it but then went and installed two more Ring cams on his front porch.

Every time I have had an incursion, I evaluate the resultant video and ask the question 'how can this be improved?'.
 
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Wow, he's sitting pretty right in front of the cam with plenty of light....another NEST fail.
 
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Sybertiger said:
Wow, he's sitting pretty right in front of the cam with plenty of light....another NEST fail.
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Yes, and notice that NOTHING is in focus in this view. Also kind of creepy that she has a cam in her bedroom?
 
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Here is yet another from my area that was posted on Nextdoor today. Seems this guy came up the walkway but knew the cam was there so he hides his face, but really did not need to! He steals the bench on the front porch.

Here is the shot of him just as he is raising his shirt to cover his face. Here his face is visible but it is too far away for a good money shot.

Nest 2022-04-21 210401.jpg

Here he is taking the bench. Notice that the frozen movement is blurry. This is what we talk about when we say in low light these cams suck. Notice that this has a lot of direct light on this porch.

Nest 2022-04-21 210307.jpg

But here he is in direct line of the cam in the area that it should perform the best. Again blurry motion.

Nest 2022-04-21 210043.jpg

So I thought maybe I am being overly critical by taking caps in full screen mode. So here they are in their native resolution. Still blurry motion.

Nest 1 2022-04-21 211134.jpgNest 1 2022-04-21 211303.jpgNest 1 2022-04-21 211356.jpg
 
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Some other things to notice.

A motion activated flood light turns on - he doesn't even flinch and still steals it.

There is enough light there that you should be able to make out something - logo on the hoodie, face, but the whole thing is basically just a blur.

This increase in thefts in Texas must be all the Californians fleeing to Texas that Natey warned you about in Post #47 LOL :lmao:
 
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wittaj said:
Some other things to notice.

A motion activated flood light turns on - he doesn't even flinch and still steals it.

There is enough light there that you should be able to make out something - logo on the hoodie, face, but the whole thing is basically just a blur.

This increase in thefts in Texas must be all the Californians fleeing to Texas that Natey warned you about in Post #47 LOL :lmao:
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I agree, there is plenty of light available for a good picture.
 
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