Washed out license plate in direct sunlight

[Sprite]

For the most part I can capture most plates, but during certain times of the day when the sunlight is hitting directly on license plates it looks washed out, in some cases the plate can't be read at all. I had my settings on color during the day but changed it to BW to try and minimize washed out plates which kind of helped.

Any suggestions to help minimize washed out plates? See pictures and my current settings in the pictures

Good clear capture


Washed out, sometimes the plate can't be read at all




Camera IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E
My settings


Backlight Off
WB: Outdoor
BW
Illuminator ZoomPrio @ 50
Defog Off

 

[samplenhold]

These are the ones that will impact the exposure. I have run 1/4000 in direct sunlight. I have also gone back to 1/2000 and adjusted the other three until I got something that worked all day long.

 

[wittaj]

Yep, it is a compromise - no setting will work for every situation, so we try to balance it. You can still read the plate.

You could run a faster shutter to eliminate the wash, but too fast and then it may not get it on real cloudy days or close to sunrise/sunset. Or you get creative and write a script to change the shutter speed for a certain period of time - so if it needs a faster shutter from 1pm to 3pm for example, send a command to adjust the shutter faster during that time. Or extend the "night" profile longer than sunrise and sunset to run 1/2000 longer, and make the daytime profile from 11am to 4 pm at a 1/4,000 shutter.

It comes down to compromise to get the best percentages for all scenarios, but you can also do some tweaking in certain situations as well.

 

[Sprite]

Yep, it is a compromise - no setting will work for every situation, so we try to balance it. You can still read the plate.

You could run a faster shutter to eliminate the wash, but too fast and then it may not get it on real cloudy days or close to sunrise/sunset. Or you get creative and write a script to change the shutter speed for a certain period of time - so if it needs a faster shutter from 1pm to 3pm for example, send a command to adjust the shutter faster during that time. Or extend the "night" profile longer than sunrise and sunset to run 1/2000 longer, and make the daytime profile from 11am to 4 pm at a 1/4,000 shutter.

It comes down to compromise to get the best percentages for all scenarios, but you can also do some tweaking in certain situations as well.

Ah that makes sense. I have the Dahua sunrise/sunset utility running. For the most part I capture most plates, there were only a few that I haven't been able to catch. I haven't really had a cloudy/rainy day to test yet.