I'm the OP from the thread that samplenhold mentioned and just want to confirm what the others have mentioned with my findings with the note that I am new to this.
I'm also concerned about achieving good night time results....
...One positive note is that there is a street lamp at that corner, but it's one of those residential ones that has minimal output.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, two things matter for night plate capture; IR and angle. At the shutter speed needed to get a clear plate on a moving target, no matter what artificial light, the image will be way too dark without IR reflecting off the plate. In my thread, I show a street sign 300 feet away that is square on to my cam and while everything else in the image is pitch black, the lettering is clearly visible. This is maybe at 45mm on a varifocal.
I was getting plate reads at night at about 260 feet using google maps to give me about a 10-15 degree angle offset.
Vehicles should not be traveling faster than 25mph (probably a lot slower as they make the turn). The angle should be face-on as vehicles make the turn.
I also estimated 25mph as well for my setup (40km/h here in Aus) and no problems at all with blurry images from motion. Face on though is the best part of your location though. Assuming you are clear of the trees?
That's a really good point about focusing. I didn't realize that PTZ's could not manually focus. There is definitely a lot to consider when setting up LPR. Sounds like the only way to know is to get a camera and try it. Is the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E the camera of choice right now?
That was the camera I wanted after reading here months ago but as I needed three, I took the chance on cheaper mods as I didn't have the budget.
Western Australian plates are no problem out much further than 215' on a 50mm varifocal with manual focus.
I recall Nayr mentioning that cheaper cams couldn't encode in video formats better suited for LPR software so the other question is whether you are going to eyeball the plates or automate the process.