Screenshots- Amcrest 4k (2.8 lens) vs Empiretech 4MP (2.8-12 lens)

[Peeper]

I have two rock columns, one on each side of my driveway. Each column has an IP turret cam facing the street. These two cameras, using "out of the box" settings:

Amcrest 4K Night Color IP PoE Turret Cam IP8M-2779EW-AI (White)

AI FEATURES & DUAL ILLUMINATION – AI Turret PoE IP Camera features Human & Vehicle Detection, IVS (Tripwire, Intrusion Detection) which triggers an event anytime a human or vehicle crosses the defined area (prevents false alerts). Dual illumination night vision with Full NightColor warm/white...

amcrest.com

EmpireTech IPC-T54IR-ZE-S3 1/1.8" CMOS 4MP IR Starlight 2.7mm–12mm Var

4-MP 1/1.8" CMOS image sensor, low luminance, and high definition image. Outputs max. 4MP (2688×1520) @25/30 fps. Built-in IR LED, and the max. illumination distance is 40 m. ROI, SVC, AI H.264/H.265, encoding after filter, flexible coding, applicable to various bandwidth and storage...

empiretech01.com

Each turret cam is about the same distance from the vehicle in the pictures. The vehicle is roughly 100 feet away.

The 4k Amcrest camera has a 2.8mm fixed lens, with 1/2.8 sensor. The 4MP Empiretech camera has a 2.8-12mm lens, with 1/1.8 sensor, set at maximum zoom (12mm)

Below are the images. They have been cropped to focus on a comparison of the vehicle.

4k screenshot with no optical zoom and no digital zoom, versus 4MP screenshot with max optical zoom but no digital zoom:
4k screenshot with no optical zoom plus 3x digital zoom, versus 4MP screenshot with max optical zoom plus 3x digital zoom:

Upon review, there is obvious evidence presented that the optical zoom and different sensor in the 4MP camera presents a significantly better image than a 4k camera with a 1/2.8 sensor.

Question-- any suggestions on camera settings to change to improve a nighttime image? Both cameras are using unaltered factory settings.

 

[wittaj]

Now you have experienced why we stress the importance of chasing sensor size and focal length over MP, and why I created this post:

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...

ipcamtalk.com

At 100 feet, a 2MP varifocal OPTICALLY zoomed in to an object with the proper focal length will beat an 8MP 2.8mm fixed lens DIGITALLY zoomed in all day and all night. Digital zoom only works in Hollywood.


In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.

Start with:

H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.

 

[Peeper]

Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.

Very helpful. I am experimenting with the suggested settings now. Yes the night image got much darker. Still need to do the walk around test.

 

[biggen]

100 feet on a 12mm camera is impossible to do much with other than see there is a car. You won't get any identifiying footage at that distance from either of those cameras. You will need a bullet cam if you want to see fine details at that distance: EmpireTech IPC-B52IR-Z12E-S2 1/2.8" CMOS 2MP 5mm–60mm Ultra Low Light

 

[Peeper]

You will need a bullet cam

Due to a number of factors I am limited to either dome or turret for these two cameras. I will eventually have 3 cameras at this location:

• 2.8 lens for general view of area
• 2.9-12mm lens so I can read company signs on commercial vehicles that pass by (hopefully), and
• 50mm camera for LPR.

The first two are mounted on the front of my rock columns with no protection from pedestrians. A box camera would be an invitation to damage.

The LPR camera will be in a housing that both disguises and secures it. (future)

 

[Peeper]

Things got a lot darker with these settings ... I am going to walk around and see what images it captures.

 

[biggen]

Due to a number of factors I am limited to either dome or turret for these two cameras. I will eventually have 3 cameras at this location:

• 2.8 lens for general view of area
• 2.9-12mm lens so I can read company signs on commercial vehicles that pass by (hopefully), and
• 50mm camera for LPR.

The first two are mounted on the front of my rock columns with no protection from pedestrians. A box camera would be an invitation to damage.

The LPR camera will be in a housing that both disguises and secures it. (future)

Yeah I get it. I just didn't want you to think that at 100 feet you would be able to I.D. people on a 2 - 12mm varifocal turret.

Edit: A 16ms shutter will give you motion blur. Need to bump it down to 10ms. Going any slower than that and it will be hard to get people in motion without bluring. I prefer a 1/125 or 8ms shutter as my slowest shutter.

 

[Peeper]

Here are two screenshots. Based on the parameters posted above.

I walked from the columns to the center of the street. No blur during movement.

I have lights on the front of the columns. I believe they are LED 60w equivalent, 2700K "edison type" decorative lamps. I presume increasing the wattage is helpful, but also does color temperature matter (Kelvin)?

 

[biggen]

That is acually not too bad. Trying walking back towards the camera closer to it on the road. See if you can pick up identifying details of yourself as you get closer while still not getting any blurring.

 

[Ri22o]

Here are two screenshots. Based on the parameters posted above.

I walked from the columns to the center of the street. No blur during movement.

I have lights on the front of the columns. I believe they are LED 60w equivalent, 2700K "edison type" decorative lamps. I presume increasing the wattage is helpful, but also does color temperature matter (Kelvin)?

Make sure IR is set to Manual 100%.

Also, with LED bulbs you will want to chase Lumens and not Wattage. Lumens is a hard number and Wattage "equivalent" is an interpretation. I have seen different "100W" bulbs with a huge range in lumen output.

I am a fan of 5000K, but not sure if there is a performance difference between 2700K and cooler temps. My driveway coach lights are 5000K 1500 lumen Edison bulbs.

Color4K-X 3.6mm

 

[Peeper]

That is acually not too bad. Trying walking back towards the camera closer to it on the road. See if you can pick up identifying details of yourself as you get closer while still not getting any blurring.

No blurring. Walking back toward the camera, once I got about 1/3 up my driveway I would have a good solid ID of a person. I'm hoping if I improve the lighting out there I could get such an ID a bit farther away.

 

[Peeper]

Make sure IR is set to Manual 100%.

Good catch, thanks. Fixed it.

 

[Peeper]

16ms shutter will give you motion blur. Need to bump it down to 10ms.

I bumped the shutter down to 10.

My coach lights are 560 lumens each. I had a single 1600 lumen bulb on hand, so I replaced one of the bulbs, then did the walk test again.

Seems bumping the shutter down to 10 made the image darker, but the increased lumens brightened it back up (a little). About a wash. Will get a 2nd 1600 lumen bulb today.

The increased lumens helped with a close in image, such as on my driveway. Was not noticeable at all out at the street.

Does anyone make a turret camera with greater than 12mm lens?

 

[Ri22o]

Good catch, thanks. Fixed it.

With the varifocal, if you are not worried about a face possibly getting washed out by IR up close, you can turn off Smart IR. I have found that with it off it will actually use more available IR. You might give this a try.

 

[biggen]

I bumped the shutter down to 10.

My coach lights are 560 lumens each. I had a single 1600 lumen bulb on hand, so I replaced one of the bulbs, then did the walk test again.

Seems bumping the shutter down to 10 made the image darker, but the increased lumens brightened it back up (a little). About a wash. Will get a 2nd 1600 lumen bulb today.

The increased lumens helped with a close in image, such as on my driveway. Was not noticeable at all out at the street.

Does anyone make a turret camera with greater than 12mm lens?

Lowering the shutter will make it darker at savings of getting less motion blur. Generally, a 1/60 shutter (16ms) is the slowest you can go for walking speed with no motion blurring. If someone is running or a car is moving, you will get motion blur on a shutter that slow. That is why I use 1/100 - 1/125 (10ms - 8ms) at night for all my cams. That basically guarantees I'll have no motion blurring ever even for quicker moving people.

Increasing the lumens will help always.

I don't think there are any turrets with focal lengths greater than ~13mm. At least none that I have seen from Dahua. They do have some dome cameras that go out to 30mm but a dome camera is a bad choice for outside use. You will get tons of IR reflections at night bouncing off the inside of the dome.

 

[JDreaming]

Here are two screenshots. Based on the parameters posted above.

I walked from the columns to the center of the street. No blur during movement.

I have lights on the front of the columns. I believe they are LED 60w equivalent, 2700K "edison type" decorative lamps. I presume increasing the wattage is helpful, but also does color temperature matter (Kelvin)?

Yes, color temperature matter with security cameras. It's nice to have warmer temperature indoor like under 3,000K, but the color is too warm for the camera unless you like that yellowish/warmer look of the video. For more natural day time look 4,800K-6,000K will be better.


You can check this chart with the color.

 

[Peeper]

Daytime pix ...

4MP has benefit of optical zoom plus some digital zoom. 4k with 2.8 lens digital zoom only.

As the jeep turned away I couldnt resist zooming in on the license plate. It was a teaser-- but ultimately no way to grab a plate.

 

[Ri22o]

Daytime pix ...

4MP has benefit of optical zoom plus some digital zoom. 4k with 2.8 lens digital zoom only.

As the jeep turned away I couldnt resist zooming in on the license plate. It was a teaser-- but ultimately no way to grab a plate.

What are your camera settings?

 

[biggen]

Yup. That distance is just way too great for those cams in that usage scenario.

 

[Peeper]

What are your camera settings?

Standard factory settings for day. I adjusted night time settings but have not tweaked day settings yet.