Camera recommendations for Europe

luk8899 said:

The typical "go to" cameras recommended on the forum are either completely unavailable in Europe or the prices are absolutely bonkers (yes, $2K for a Dahua IPC-HF7442F-Z-X that sells for $330 in US).

In fact if it's any camera with larger pixel sizes the prices start at $1500 and only go up from there, even for old 2M ones. So it makes no sense so buy them.

But having large sensor size is not the only way you can get better night time quality. Another method is having a large objective lens. It seems the only well priced cameras with large objective lenses are those hanging sphere cameras with huge optical zooms like 90x. They usually come with imx415 (so only 1/2.8 sensor) and cpus support 30fps at 4k, various so so ai features like human tracking, but the real reason why bought them are objective lenses up to 30mm and sometimes focusing infrared Illumination as well so you can use them for identify pretty well. The usual price is $200~$300, fast ptz, poe built in of course and two way audio. Usually hikvision firmware.

I've been testing two of them for quite a while and I'm about to buy 4 more. Tell me why I should buy something else please . I'm not posting any links because the usual sites are full of them.

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luk8899 said:

The typical "go to" cameras recommended on the forum are either completely unavailable in Europe or the prices are absolutely bonkers (yes, $2K for a Dahua IPC-HF7442F-Z-X that sells for $330 in US).

In fact if it's any camera with larger pixel sizes the prices start at $1500 and only go up from there, even for old 2M ones. So it makes no sense so buy them.

But having large sensor size is not the only way you can get better night time quality. Another method is having a large objective lens. It seems the only well priced cameras with large objective lenses are those hanging sphere cameras with huge optical zooms like 90x. They usually come with imx415 (so only 1/2.8 sensor) and cpus support 30fps at 4k, various so so ai features like human tracking, but the real reason why bought them are objective lenses up to 30mm and sometimes focusing infrared Illumination as well so you can use them for identify pretty well. The usual price is $200~$300, fast ptz, poe built in of course and two way audio. Usually hikvision firmware.

I've been testing two of them for quite a while and I'm about to buy 4 more. Tell me why I should buy something else please . I'm not posting any links because the usual sites are full of them.

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steve1225 said:

2-3 weeks delivery time using tax free way or 1 week using normal way.. done multiple times for smaller and bigger order - zero problems..

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Iemand91 said:

Didn't know he had 2 different shipping methodes.
All things from him came delivered in about a week to The Netherlands with often a ~€10 import cost (from the shipping company; via a letter through the post about a week later)

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steve1225 said:

how long ago was that?
in past small value packages (up to declared 30-40 Euro) was tax free..

now in EU, shipments up to 150Euro can use simple method - you or sender must pay VAT (20-25% depending of country) for them...
for shipment above 150Euro You must do full customs - which usually ends with import duty + VAT + fee for courier/customs company...

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luk8899 said:

Thanks for your replies. I'll get in touch with Andy once I research these cameras a bit more but I expect shipping costs to be a bit of a show stopper, especially if I wanted to get just one or two initially (for 5+ I imagine shipping on a per camera basis is not that bad).

Then over here you're charged VAT not just on the product. Which is the same if I bought anything locally, but on shipping as well. So let's say $200 of shipping becomes $270 by the time VAT and handling charge is added.

Last time I checked I think it was last year. Perhaps this has changed (hopefully for the better not worse).

Surprisingly to many the actual tarrifs are very reasonable (1% or 2%, I recently paid 2.7% - on a fiber fusion welder from China, about $10 and then ups charged me $20 for submitting the paperwork I had to fill, and they submitted it with an error that doubled my VAT charge so now I'll be sending papers back and forth for weeks before I get it sorted). However, talking about VAT as it was a tariff is incorrect, because if I go to a local shop I pay the same VAT.

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luk8899 said:

but wait... didn't you say:

(emphasis added)

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luk8899 said:

So would it be true to say there are basically no 4K IR sensitive cameras that would feature low light sensitivity comparable to these 1/1.2 sensors for visible light?

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luk8899 said:

Lets say I decide low light performance is more important than MP and go for 4MP. You mentioned WizzMind-S 5442-S3 as the base model. What would be a good model in this category (where IR and low light black and white sensitivity is most important to me). Other important features are: depth of focus, prefferably no bokeh/other artefacts, quick exposure adjustment so a flashlight doesn't blind it for a minute, good image quality.

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• between chassis: bullet vs turret - bullet for vertical mount, have 2x more IR diodes, turret for horizontal / under soffit mount
• lenses:
  • fixed 2.8/3.6 don't have optical zoom and are a little brighter,
  • varifocal ZE/ZHE offers optical zoom like 0.5 to 2x on iPhone, this lens is losing light when you zoom - 2x on ZE is much darker than 0.5x,
  • varifocal Z4E offers zoom like 2x to 6x and this lens is bright...

luk8899 said:

Features that are nice to have but not that important: local storage, AI (I do all my processing server side)

Almost all my cameras currently have Sony IMX415 sensors and I use IR illumination a lot. I've ordered two (no name) 1/1.8 4MP cameras in the past just to see if they are better in low light conditions than imx415, but it doesn't seem so in my circumstances (but that may be a bit unfair as only one is IR illuminated and the IR it has is pretty weak).

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luk8899 said:

Thank you for a quick reply. Now I see I missed the M

Got it.

Yes, waiting few weeks is perfectly fine. I'll ask Andy about it. Let me just make sure about one thing. With the white light on detecting a person. Am I right assuming the feature can be switched off?

Thanks. Very interesting. I'd get 4M. Pity there is no 32mm varifocal as I do need it in at least two locations.

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luk8899 said:

That is tricky because most of my cameras are set to overview. There is almost no light during the night. Here are few pictures from the darkest part of the night and also when it gets a bit lighter (around 3am this time of year). All 4K cameras are IMX415 based. Two lower resolution cameras use 1/1.8 sensors.
This is very dark, IR illumination.

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luk8899 said:

The plan is to add some cameras to IDENTIFY. Some pretty nearby so 3.6mm will be fine, but at least 3 need very high magnification. 32mm at 4MB is going to be ok, but with not much leeway.

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luk8899 said:

That is the case for me.

I have this on two of my cameras now. It is handy when you need to go there at night and light it pretty useful as for deterrrence. Where I'm at it would make it easier to get over the fence rather than deter so I'm looking to disable/enable this feature selectively.

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luk8899 said:

Do you mean the FOV is smaller? Yes, that's what I need. I need to put these cameras pretty far and be able to zoom in. I wouldn't even mind manual focus, but no one makes these anymore. These should be able to reach up to 40m to IDENTIFY from what I read.

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luk8899 said:

Yes. That is understandable. What I'm trying to find out now is if these 1/1.8 4M cameras (perhaps using OmniVision's OS04A10) are worth 2.5x the price and half the pixel density if I have to IR illuminate anyway. I suspect they may very well be worth it if it is true they are about 13x more sensitive to IR (the test conditions are different for the Sony's imx415 0.003lux and OmniVision's OS04A10 0.0004lux meaning that the OmniVision sensor is claimed to be about 13.5x more sensitive to IR).

Even though the scene is illuminated, it is not a lot of light. So I suspect the key difference will be during movement. Still I'd love to see some comparisons applicable to my use before spending a lot (as I mentioned in the other thread).

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luk8899 said:

I tend to look at dori distances calculated from sensor size and FOV. The 32mm has IDENTIFY at 39.5m (at 250px/m). It may end up closer than that (25m and 31m) so the motorised zoom is very good. I did read the threads that say you should 4x that for the night. If we want to have that 32mm would be good for only 10m and the frame is about 2.6m x 1.9m big so that is pretty good to cover lets say a balcony window at 10m. But that is not ideal for me.

So lets say I wanted to have 1000px/m at 39m. that would require 110mm lens for that 1/1.8 sensor or 39x ifwe're talking zoom numbers. I actually do have some 30x optical zoom PTZ cameras and another one 54x on order, but they all have imx415. (the 54x one claims laser IR diodes, I can't wait for it to arrive to test it. The spec claim 300m IR illumination distance).

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luk8899 said:

If you or anyone else can point me towards them that would be great. As mentioned I failed to find any. I looked on google, I looked using the search on this site. Went through 6 pages of results in google for keywords like "site:ipcamtalk.com ir performance comparison" etc and not a single dark IR lit comparison of relatively modern cheap imx415 based cam vs WizMind-S 5xx2-S3 on the same scene. Even some old camera with imx415 in comparison to an older one with the 4MP 1/1.8 sensor would be informative.

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luk8899 said:

I tend to look at dori distances calculated from sensor size and FOV. The 32mm has IDENTIFY at 39.5m (at 250px/m). It may end up closer than that (25m and 31m) so the motorised zoom is very good. I did read the threads that say you should 4x that for the night. If we want to have that 32mm would be good for only 10m and the frame is about 2.6m x 1.9m big so that is pretty good to cover lets say a balcony window at 10m. But that is not ideal for me.

So lets say I wanted to have 1000px/m at 39m. that would require 110mm lens for that 1/1.8 sensor or 39x ifwe're talking zoom numbers. I actually do have some 30x optical zoom PTZ cameras and another one 54x on order, but they all have imx415. (the 54x one claims laser IR diodes, I can't wait for it to arrive to test it. The spec claim 300m IR illumination distance).

If you or anyone else can point me towards them that would be great. As mentioned I failed to find any. I looked on google, I looked using the search on this site. Went through 6 pages of results in google for keywords like "site:ipcamtalk.com ir performance comparison" etc and not a single dark IR lit comparison of relatively modern cheap imx415 based cam vs WizMind-S 5xx2-S3 on the same scene. Even some old camera with imx415 in comparison to an older one with the 4MP 1/1.8 sensor would be informative.

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