What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at night

GaretJax

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I have a long shared driveway and my house has a straight on view of it. I would love to be able to capture license plates on approaching cars at night. I expect I will put a few Hikvision DS-2CD2332 cameras around the house. If I use one of them to track the shared driveway, from how far away could I reasonably expect to be able to "see" the license plate at night? Assuming I spend ~$140 on each camera, is there a different camera (from any manufacturer) that would allow me to grab the license plate from a longer distance? If so, which one and how much should I expect to spend?

Thanks a lot.
 

nayr

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

I dont expect you to be able to read the plate at any distance due to the headlamps with that setup... and then if you do manage to get it to read a plate at night it will be blind to everything else.

license plate reading needs pretty much a dedicated camera, with very powerfull IR if it has to overcome headlamps.. and because the plate is going to be so bright at night, with the fact that there moving.. your going to have the shutter speed so fast that anything not glowing like a star is going to be blacked out.. the more zoom the better, you want it framed up so it captures an image of the car head on and not much else

edit: attached image should give you an idea of what your in-for..
 

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3dogpottery

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

Would it be more effective to read a rear license plate?
 

nayr

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

it is alot easier to read rear plates, brake lights are still bright but nothing like headlamps..

however, few people tend to back into a driveway.. almost never going to happen with a very long driveway.. so I dont think its any help unless he hides it at the end of his driveway looking in.
 

3dogpottery

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

I should have added that the camera would be facing towards the home. But of course this would involve having to place the camera far from his house. Anyway, that is the way I would do it if getting a picture of the license plate was very important.
 

3dogpottery

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

Incidentally, why does it say "Getting the hang of it" under my user name? I didn't hang anything I'm aware of.
 

nayr

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

yeah and installing it remotely he could hide it in a bird-house real close to the driveway, so a big zoom wont be required..

but it all comes down to, how badly do you want these plate readings? Bad enough your willing to dedicate a camera and storage to plate reading only, and digging a trench to get network and power at the end of his driveway.. if so then you should buy a camera designed to read plates, because if you dont get 100% reliable reads by the time your done you wont be happy.

here is another image illustrating just how useless the camera will be once its tuned for reading plates at night:


A human could walk right past that camera at night and it wont even register.. unless there carrying a flashlight.
the above image is from a trail cam for plates, its expensive but wouldn't require remote power/network:
http://www.trailcampro.com/reconyxsm750review.aspx

edit: 3dog, thats just a title generated off your number of posts..
 

GaretJax

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

I dont expect you to be able to read the plate at any distance due to the headlamps with that setup... and then if you do manage to get it to read a plate at night it will be blind to everything else.

license plate reading needs pretty much a dedicated camera, with very powerfull IR if it has to overcome headlamps.. and because the plate is going to be so bright at night, with the fact that there moving.. your going to have the shutter speed so fast that anything not glowing like a star is going to be blacked out.. the more zoom the better, you want it framed up so it captures an image of the car head on and not much else

edit: attached image should give you an idea of what your in-for..
OK - Good to know. So does this mean I would need to install 2 Hikvision DS-2CD2332 and configure one specially for reading license plates? Or does the second camera need to be a particular one?
 

GaretJax

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

it is alot easier to read rear plates, brake lights are still bright but nothing like headlamps..

however, few people tend to back into a driveway.. almost never going to happen with a very long driveway.. so I dont think its any help unless he hides it at the end of his driveway looking in.
Yeah - I've thought about running some cabling to the end of the driveway to get the back side of the cars as they enter, but it crosses multiple people's properties and isn't worth the trouble.

- - - Updated - - -

Incidentally, why does it say "Getting the hang of it" under my user name? I didn't hang anything I'm aware of.
It is a system generated tag that changes as you get more and more posts.
 

nayr

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Re: What camera will most effectively allow me to capture license plates on cars at n

most hikvision and dahua cameras I have encountered are capable of being configured to read plates at night if the vehicles are moving at relatively slow speeds towards or away from the camera, even the lower resolution ones.. I would tend to favor a camera with a variable lens so you can get the image framed up perfectly.. however depending on the power of the onboard IR and the distances your needing to read you may have to supplement IR lighting with a few spotlights to really get that plate to shine as bright as the headlamps.

typically you end up disabling the onboard light sensor to switch to night, and go off a fixed time or external call to change from day to night.. and in recording you sacrifice resolution to gain FPS and keyframes so you get nice crisp images and smooth video of moving objects.
 
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