Thief caught on camera at my house

T

Travis798

Pulling my weight
Jun 25, 2020
113
220
Oklahoma
While it's hard to see what the little thief got, it was a chuck it and ball I use playing fetch with my dog. I looked all over for this thing yesterday, so eventually went back to my cameras to track it down and this is what I saw. I guess I'm not good at setting them up, my 5442 cameras struggle at night, even with an additional infrared mounted beside it, so I'll include further away footage from my color 4k camera as well.



View attachment Clipboard_sideyard.20241211_005530-005626.10.mp4View attachment Clipboard_outsidebarn.20241211_005542-005620.11.mp4
 
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The coyotes and I have a long history. I thought they had stopped coming into my yard after they killed my favorite barn cat. Looks like they are getting brave again and will need a reminder to stay away.

All my 5442's pretty much suck. I've played with the settings and generally just made things worse. I think they are all back to default settings, but maybe I'll check tonight. Think I'll be staying up late anyway. This one is a varifocal zoomed all the way out, it is better if I zoom it in, but I think I'm going to swap it for another color4k camera. I'm still amazed at how bright of a picture they can show with very little light.
 
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Travis798 said:
The coyotes and I have a long history. I thought they had stopped coming into my yard after they killed my favorite barn cat. Looks like they are getting brave again and will need a reminder to stay away.

All my 5442's pretty much suck. I've played with the settings and generally just made things worse. I think they are all back to default settings, but maybe I'll check tonight. Think I'll be staying up late anyway. This one is a varifocal zoomed all the way out, it is better if I zoom it in, but I think I'm going to swap it for another color4k camera. I'm still amazed at how bright of a picture they can show with very little light.
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Some of my 5442's default to an overly dark image. They have Smart IR turned on under the Exposure setting. I turn this Off to get a better image on mine. The 5442's I have that don't have Smart IR have a much brighter image by default.
 
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Yeah, same. It can make the whole view dark like that. Post your settings. We can get that working a lot better. Also probably need to move or adjust the cam/illuminator so you're not getting glare which will make the image hazy like that too.
 
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I went back and looked at my camera settings and I have the shutter speed set from 0 - 2. I can drastically brighten the image if I change that, but if I recall the reason for the change, and darkening it up so much, was that I was experiencing very drastic ghosting with motion to the point I could walk through and never see myself on camera. I'm going to play with it some more, and I'll start up another thread if I make some progress and need help fine tuning.
 
Try starting with shutter on manual at 1/60. gain at ~50, noise reduction at ~40, SmartIR off, IR on manual at 100, brightness at 55, contrast at 65, sharpening at 25-ish. Can adjust various things up/down from there as needed but that should give you a decent starting point. Also try pointing the illuminator a little more away from the camera.
 
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I just changed it to shutter priority and got this. Seems to be really close to the settings you listed above as well. I walked outside and the video was good. I've been meaning to move the infrared to help the glare for a while, I just haven't gotten around to it. I didn't even think about changing the camera settings after adding a light on my barn. Not a lot of it gets over there, but apparently it's enough. It also allowed me to change my also dark driveway cam settings to color because the light I added really brightens up that area. Now I have to do a cam settings check on everything!
sideyard.20241212_193709975.jpg
 
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Shutter priority can let gain go real high which can lead to noise/blurring with movement, etc. So better to use manual if you can and set shutter and gain limits directly. But that's a lot better. You may have enough light between the cam and illuminator to get away with running shutter priority/auto and still get decent results with movement.

Getting rid of the glare will help the clarity a bunch. Looks like you may be getting some from the white soffit/trim there too. Maybe try switching the cam IR off and just using the illuminator to see if that changes the glare. If so, then might try tipping the cam down a bit. If not, then you know that it's coming from the illuminator.
 
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The IR for the camera is already off, it's worse with it on. When I set up my IR it was to watch the deer eat all my pears from my pear trees at night, and the cam was zoomed in past the soffit for that. I had an image closer to this then. Those 2 trees behind that power pole are pear trees. I just havent been home much for the past couple of years and havent readjusted everything.1000014288.jpg
 
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Well I would post this in another thread but since this thread kind of ended up as a support thread I figured I would post it here. After realizing how bad the footage of the coyote was, I made some changes. I moved the external IR further away and adjusted my cam angle a touch just because it's looking west and I was catching way too much evening sun. I set the shutter to manual and 0-15 with gain at 0-50. I tried 0-8.3 first on the shutter but it was pretty dark. For reference, the point where I stop and turn is where there is a tree between me and the outside light source. It was dark enough in my path that I wouldn't have seen something in front of me.


View attachment sideyard.20241216_160000_2.mp4
 
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That's much better.

You might try running it without the cam's IR on. If you have enough external IR, most will look better that way. The cam adjusts internally to the brighter area with it on. You'll get a better overall image in most cases with it off. And if you're going to run the on-camera IR, then turn off SmartIR. It's not doing anything for you with that long of a view anyway and it tends to do the same. Makes the overall image darker in favor of the smaller brighter area.
 
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