Affordable Camera for high-entropy video?

TheWaterbug

Getting comfortable
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I've been recording events of bee swarms moving into my "swarm traps" for a few years now:
  • 2018, using a Raspberry Pi camera module.
  • 2019, the inside camera was a Reolink RLC-411, and the outside camera a Reolink RLC-410S.
  • 2020, Reolink RLC-410S inside and RLC-410S outside (the RLC-411 had died)
  • 2021, Amcrest IP5M-B1186EW-28MM inside and Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW outside
  • 2022, Amcrest IP5M-B1186EW-28MM inside and Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW outside.
  • 2023, same Amcrest IP5M-B1186EW-28MM inside and Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW outside as last 2 years, but the inside camera must have gotten jostled beforehand, so the IR LEDs are bouncing off the glass barrier, and it's a bit out of focus.
Granted, I'm using inexpensive cameras, but none of them seems to do all that well with the video once I get a few thousand bees moving around, possibly because the processors in these cameras weren't specced to deal with this level of entropy. Surprisingly I think the RLC-411 from the 2019 Inside View did quite well, despite the stuttering in the RTSP feed caused by the faulty noise reduction implementation.

What cameras out there could deal with this ridiculous amount of entropy, without a ridiculous price?

A bullet/cylinder form factor would be ideal, since my camera "mount" is a 3" ABS pipe/baffle, but I can rebuild the box for a different form factor if I can get the image quality that I want. Thanks!
 
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