5442 picture quality issue

grumpywilson

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I've been having picture quality issues with this cam since I got it almost a year ago and am FINALLY posting for help. This is just for daytime right now. The first pic is when it is bright an sunny and the more normal green looking grass is a bright overcast day. Could it be just a update issue? Or maybe it's the location? It's down low about two to three feet in a bush. Any help is much appreciated.
 

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bigredfish

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WDR- wayyyy too much of it.

Dahua's WDR works really well, but there are points in the setting where it jumps from ok to holy crap!. I see it at about 40 ish.

Try turning WDR down to 20 or so. You shouldnt need more than that.

Also on your exposure, I dont care for shutter priority. Try Manual/Customized Range, 0-8.33. Leave Gain at 50
 
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cd36

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Are you using ssa for your backlight setting? I've seen this sometimes using ssa before as well. I think it can sometimes choose an overly aggressive wdr setting.
 

grumpywilson

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WDR- wayyyy too much of it.

Dahua's WDR works really well, but there are points in the setting where it jumps from ok to holy crap!. I see it at about 40 ish.

Try turning WDR down to 20 or so. You shouldnt need more than that.

Also on your exposure, I dont care for shutter priority. Try Manual/Customized Range, 0-8.33. Leave Gain at 50
Ok, I changed the WDR to 20 and the exposure settings to what you suggested. This is the updated pic.
 

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bigredfish

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Ok, I changed the WDR to 20 and the exposure settings to what you suggested. This is the updated pic.

Looks good to me. You can play with Gain and a little Gamma if you want to brighten it more, but I prefer a natural image where possible, not washed out. WDR adds articats and messes with color/tint something awful. If you run color at night, turn it off as it adds blur.
 

grumpywilson

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Looks good to me. You can play with Gain and a little Gamma if you want to brighten it more, but I prefer a natural image where possible, not washed out. WDR adds articats and messes with color/tint something awful. If you run color at night, turn it off as it adds blur.
Thank you. looks like it has a lot less white haze in it. We shall see what happens when it gets really sunny out. Which looks like the sun might pop out from behind the clouds for a bit. I'll have to check the night settings now.
 

bigredfish

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Some run an even faster shutter in daytime. But yeah you have it right, see how it does in various cloud/sun combinations. You could go even faster say 0-2
 

grumpywilson

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Here are my night time settings. Any suggestions to start with? The only thing I don't have is a night shot with IR on. I just went all the way back in my recordings to find one and realized I had turned off the IR when it snowed and forgot to turn it back on. So I guess without a baseline pic the settings are no good. I'll have to get a screen shot later before I do anything with the night settings.
 

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bigredfish

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Yeah hard to say without seeing the scene at night.

The primary settings will be Exposure, DNR, and IR

I like manual shutter at night, 1/120 is a good place to start. DNR less than 40, IR SmartIR for starters. Stay way from backlight if you can
 

grumpywilson

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Ok, here is my night time picture. Maybe it's IR interference? I'm not so sure because the last time I took the camera off and held it up higher and away from everything the picture still looked the same. Maybe more testing is needed.
 

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sebastiantombs

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Looks washed out to me. Try brightness and contrast on that. Reduce brightness, up the contrast.
 

wittaj

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Combo of IR bounce/reflection and +1 on lower brightness and up contrast. Can probably take gamma down a bit too...Or change to manual shutter so that you can lower the gain.
 

bigredfish

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Agree with above posts.

The thing is you're so close to the ground, its eating up a bunch of your IR.

Also try going to 1/60 exposure. In B&W it may be enough. Have to walk around in front of it to know if you get blur or not at 1/60
 

wittaj

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I would try a little faster shutter to try to knock the IR bounce off the sides. Did you try manual shutter so that you can lower the gain?

Do you have the turret or the bullet? If the bullet, the near is the top IR and the far is the bottom IR (or reversed would need to check LOL), and you could knock a lot of the lower IF bounce off by turning off the bottom one. If it is the turret, they are both on the bottom.
 
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