Tips and tricks for cameras when having lightning on house

[Plarsson]

I have a lot of lights eg spotlights, normal light bulbs etc on my house. At especially near entrances where I would like to place cameras of course.

Are there any tips and tricks for these situations? How to think...
I don't want the cameras to be blinded but at the same time I don't want turn off the lights.

Thanks!

 

[bradner]

Don't turn them off!! They're one of the greatest assets to reducing nighttime motion blur. I added exterior lights to vastly improve my night shots.

• Minimize having the cameras pointed towards the lights if possible. I have a couple higher lights that my cameras are facing and in the day I have those cams fully zoomed out but at night I have a profile that positions the cams and zoom so that the lights are just out of the cams field of view.
• Turn of the cams internal IR lights if you don't need them - keeps bugs, spiderwebs and rain drops from triggering false motion movements.
• Get big sensor cams for great night shots - the 5442's (in my signature) - then with the exterior light you may be able to run the cams in color mode! My household LOVES it now that I have over 6 cams in full color mode at night now!

 

[JNDATHP]

Here are a couple of current pictures of the house lights just in frame. The B&W shot is from an older Chimese camera that I have not replaced yet with a starlight model. All of our other exterior cameras run in forced color mode. The color shot you see is with our outside LED light on at 5%!

 

[brianegge]

I whole house surge suppressor is good for any home. If you have lots of lightning one or more lightning rods are needed. The small spikes on the tips can actually prevent lightning strikes.

 

[TonyR]

I whole house surge suppressor is good for any home. If you have lots of lightning one or more lightning rods are needed. The small spikes on the tips can actually prevent lightning strikes.

FWIW, the OP is fortunate in that he has "lighting" questions, not "lightNing" issues.

 

[samplenhold]

Generally, if you mount the cam near the light, then mount it on the side of the light it will be facing. So lookin at the house, if you want the FOV looking to the right, then mount the cam to the right of the light. That way you are not looking through the light. So here the cam is mounted to the right of the coach light. I get no issues from that light.

 

[Plarsson]

FWIW, the OP is fortunate in that he has "lighting" questions, not "lightNing" issues.

I will call the auto correct function on this one and that I'm not a native English speaker

 

[Plarsson]

Generally, if you mount the cam near the light, then mount it on the side of the light it will be facing. So lookin at the house, if you want the FOV looking to the right, then mount the cam to the right of the light. That way you are not looking through the light. So here the cam is mounted to the right of the coach light. I get no issues from that light.

View attachment 73581 View attachment 73582

The light I have is similar to what you have, only difference is that it is right next to a door entrance. I would like to have a camera on the same wall as the door, pointed towards the door. So I will probably unfortunately never be able to have the light behind the camera as you.

Maybe I just have to accept the fact and work on blc of my 5442.

 

[CCTVCam]

If you have to have it on the same wall, you could always shield the lens either shielding the light upwards if mounting above (eg chooisng a wall light that doesn't spill light upwards, or blokcing the upwards projection towards the camera in some way), or shielding the camera from the light if mounting below (to this end bullets are often shielded by the casing whereas turrets are not, or you could mount something between the light and camera to put it in shadow. As for aethetics, well whole different ball game and will depend on your light and camera type.

 

[Plarsson]

Thanks for all your replies. I will take some pictures tonight of the entrance and also one more additional entrance I have issues with placement on.

 

[samplenhold]

Here is a shot of a T5442TM-AS in 2.8mm. It is pointed directly at the coach light on the garage pillar. There are also two spots in the ceiling as you can see the slight glow from one above the window near the car and one over the door.



Here is one looking back towards that cam from a T2231T-ZS-S2 which you can see is mounted from the beam by the driveway in the previous photo. It looks past the two spots in the ceiling and there is another coach light on the far end of the porch.



Before you mount it, use a test rig as described in the Cliff Notes. Then you can decide if the glare is worth the view.

 

[kolbasz]

Looking at these pictures raises a new question about strategy.

What is the ideal strategy, exterior light illuminating the yard or IR. I ask because I noticed my IR video is quite crap at night, so I turned it off and it seemed as though the image actually improved. While still B/W, I saw farther into the yard. The caveat, my doorbell cam has terrible night vision and when the camera IR is off, this image is then black.

My main camera is the IPC-t5442t-ze, so the better night vision is expected. I could further illuminate the front by turning on the house lights, something I never do. The front of the house is always dark at night, so do I change to a strategy that turns the front light on as opposed to the camera going ot night mode with IR?

Also, while looking to improve night imaging, I saw a post recently that mentioned that I should be using manual shutter speeds vs auto, is this a true statement and if so, is it a lot of trial and error to pick the right number?

 

[Plarsson]

As promised, here are photos of the two entrances.

The three first are from front door, as you can see there are lights to the right of the door. I can pretty easy get cable everywhere there as the PoE switch is right above the ceiling above the door.
I dont need to see people walking up to the door, but would like to see them good when they stand right infront of the door. Im planning to put the camera left of the door in the ceiling. Comments?

The last picture shows the entrance to a toolshop, which the original post is about. I tested to put a camera both to the (far) right of the door and left of the door, and flood light is OK I think. Comments?

 

[sebastiantombs]

If you ceiling mount the camera at the front door you'll get really nice shots of the top of the heads of your visitors. A camera used for front door ID needs to be no higher than six feet, ideally lower, so you get a full on face shot.

 

[Plarsson]

If you ceiling mount the camera at the front door you'll get really nice shots of the top of the heads of your visitors. A camera used for front door ID needs to be no higher than six feet, ideally lower, so you get a full on face shot.

In that case I would need a small camera for esthetic reasons.

 

[wittaj]

@kolbasz - I think most would agree here that light, and more of it, is better. A lot perps will pass on the well lit house as well.

And yes, you have to manual set the shutter at night so that you do not get ghosting and blur. The problem with most consumer grade cameras is that they are tweaked to give a great still shot at night - look it is midnight and it looks like daytime...but then get any motion and you cannot make out details.

So with the cameras we talk about on here, they are usually set to auto shutter, which does what I just described above, so you need to play with the shutter to balance out getting a great image versus blur. The faster the shutter, the less the blur, but that is offset by more light is needed at faster shutters.

So you try with like a 1/250 shutter and then start backing down until you find the balance of it being light enough but without blur. I usually go in this manner 1/250, 1/200, 1/150, 1/130, 1/100, 1/60 and then test with a moving subject.

 

[samplenhold]

but would like to see them good when they stand right infront of the door

I would put a 5442 turret in the red circle and paint it the color of your siding.

 

[samplenhold]

What is the ideal strategy, exterior light illuminating the yard or IR

What @wittaj said.

It is up to you to decide how you want the view to look. Color or B&W/IR. Most folks would want color for obvious reasons. But getting color at night takes light. There are several settings that you need to fine tune to get the best view with enough light to see details and a fast enough shutter speed to freeze motion to kill blur. In some instances, this will not be attainable. The only way you can decide is to test it out.

Use a test rig and adjust each setting in the exposure tab one by one. Learn what a change to each does to the brightness and video noise. It will take time. You may have to live with a certain amount of motion blur. While these cams are really good, especially compared to what we had two years ago, they are not comparable to $1000-$1500 cams.

 

[kolbasz]

not to take over this thread, but to add another thought to lighting and color vs IR/BW. The one relies solely on light being present, which is fine, but what is the trade-off and thinking. Is IR/BW configured, tweaked and set to auto for those cases the light might get turned off? Setting the light to a timer is good, but there are the inevitable times that the light doesnt turn on or it gets turned off, so you need to not lose footage, so in these cases is it enough to rely on the camera to auto switch to night mode? While lighting is different, it would seem like a bad idea to configure night mode to be good with the lights on, because in the event the lights go out, then you lose video, so instead, day time mode should handle day and night conditions no? Or is it a strong, make sure the freaking lights are on?

I made note to the wife that we will start keeping the front lights on and when I explained she was cool with it, but still, I can see them occasionally getting turned off. It is way freaking better with them on. the color footage almost beats the day time footage.

 

[samplenhold]

it would seem like a bad idea to configure night mode to be good with the lights on, because in the event the lights go out, then you lose video

Again, only you can decide that.

My front porch has two sets of lights. Coach lights and pot lights. They each have a switch at the front door. I replaced the switch with auto-timers that adjust for the daily change in the rise and setting of the sun. They come on automatically and shut off the same. No one ever touches those switches since there is no reason to. The only time I have had them turn off was during power outages. And only a few of those outages were at night. So even though my BI server and POE switches are on UPS and last about 30 minutes, those cams will not have good color video. Some will switch to IR as I have them set that way. For the very few times that has happened in the last two years, I do not worry about it.

I have multiple cams that cover the front of the house. That includes the driveway. I do not expect one cam to do everything. Each has a job and was chosen for its functionality to perform that job. It has been my experience that the front door is the main access point for perps getting into the type of house we live in, either for burglary or home invasion. So along the front of my house I have a total of 11 cams, not including the LPR cams. I have 4 cams around the front door. I have two cams that look along the front of the porch. I have three cams that cover the driveway and another that gives a view of the driveway. If you come in through the front door, or the windows on the front porch, or hit my car on the driveway, I have you on multiple cams. One of them should be able to give me a good shot of you.

You can't have a 100% error free system. It is up to you to decide what is important and what jobs you expect your system to perform.