Dahua Auto focus lock off focus

J

Jarrett

n3wb
Sep 4, 2017
16
2
Does anyone know how to disable auto focus on Dahua cameras? I purchased the IPC-HFW5231E-Z12E
When I zoom in it just wants to jump around on focus as objects move in front of it. I would like to be able to set the zoom and then lock off the focus on a point. When the focus moves around it makes the camera not really usable.Dahua Focus control.jpg
 
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Hmmm. I haven't seen this before and we have quite a few of these installed, including the 3MP bullets on my house. Can you post a short video of this happening?
 
aristobrat said:
I'm running the 2018 03 firmware on it, ... not sure if that matters.
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It doesn't matter. I have one with 2018 03 and two with 2017 11 firmware and they all have this issue. One day they will work fine, the next day they don't. My issue is loss of focus after changing from color to b/w and vice versa. I've locked the camera in b/w full time and it will stay in focus. Really disappointing though as color is very nice during daylight hours for identification.
 
I can't speak for the OP, but mine are still not working correctly. In fact, I believe one of mine is faulty as it won't auto focus at all, period. About ready to get rid of these cameras and try another brand. See youtube links below.

The first link is the camera that seems faulty to me. The second is a brand new camera that will auto focus correctly changing from b/w to color or vice versa on most days, but in the video it was an overcast day and it failed miserably. I have the faulty camera set b/w full time, but with day and night profiles. It remains in focus now (for now) but there's no profile for ir so it's on all the time in b/w. It's beyond me why you can't have it turn on with night profile and off with day profile is beyond me. I'm definitely very disappointed.

All the money I've spent on this and the camera won't even do what it's expected to do as a basic operation. If anyone knows of another camera that will actually
work please let me know.



 
That is awful. Are the cameras zoomed at all? I would think the more telephoto the lens is combined with wide aperture =very shallow depth of field. I know that's probably not why you purchased these particular cams, but they may be better at a very wide angle.
I think there is a manual mode also that keeps the aperature small. Maybe that too.
 
Maybe this will help. Sorry if t doesnt.
I would also install the pal software if you are running Ntfc or Visa versa.

 
drrich1101 said:
That is awful. Are the cameras zoomed at all? I would think the more telephoto the lens is combined with wide aperture =very shallow depth of field. I know that's probably not why you purchased these particular cams, but they may be better at a very wide angle.
I think there is a manual mode also that keeps the aperature small. Maybe that too.
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Yes they are zoomed in to capture license plates. I see what you're saying, but my opinion is that if Dahua couldn't figure out how to make this camera auto focus throughout its entire range of zoom they shouldn't have brought it to market. The cameras are in manual mode, especially exposure during night hours to capture plates.

bickford said:
Have you tried to adjust the focus directly in the camera ?

BICK
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Not sure if I've tried auto focus directly in the camera, but zoom and focus buttons do work directly in the camera. I have updated the camera to the most recent firmware and preformed a hard reset afterwards. For the most part, the camera will maintain focus if left in b/w full time and using the day/night profiles to schedule exposure, shutter etc., change. I really miss no color in day mode as I could actually identify faces previously, but that's not possible in b/w mode. If they would let you manually set/ lock the focus independently for day and night profiles and allow IR to be assigned to a profile I could make it work. Still sub par because of sunrise/sunset changes through the year but I could get by.
 
Well, mine too. My camera has only been operating for a couple of days, but I just checked remotely and it was completely out of focus. It seemed ok when it was on night mode. See attached.
I had to manually log into the camera and click the focus button. Uh oh
 
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Here is what I'm thinking......."CRAP"

but on a more serious note, I had the cam switch from night/ir to day at 5am. Because I am also using this for license plates, I have a high shutter speed set manually for both day and night.
When the cam kicked to day at 5am, the image was extremely dark and grainy since it was dark outside. It couldn't focus, and kept that poor focus even when light out, now.
It looks like the camera doesnt continually try to focus unless its zoomed in or switches day to night or night to day
I changed the time that it will go to day color mode until 715 am. Hopefully that will do the job. We will see.
 
drrich1101 said:
Here is what I'm thinking......."CRAP"

but on a more serious note, I had the cam switch from night/ir to day at 5am. Because I am also using this for license plates, I have a high shutter speed set manually for both day and night.
When the cam kicked to day at 5am, the image was extremely dark and grainy since it was dark outside. It couldn't focus, and kept that poor focus even when light out, now.
It looks like the camera doesnt continually try to focus unless its zoomed in or switches day to night or night to day
I changed the time that it will go to day color mode until 715 am. Hopefully that will do the job. We will see.
Click to expand...

I had to do the same thing. IIRC, I set my Day profile to start at 8am and end at 5pm est. Where I live, the latest it gets light enough to see well in the morning is 8am, and the earliest it gets dark is 6pm. DST really messes things up. I wish they would just do away with it, but that's another topic altogether. I've noticed that my camera still has focus failures occasionally after switching to night profile due to very overcast days causing not enough light for it to focus properly. Moving it back an hour before certainly helped, but it's still not a set and forget thing. Still have to keep an eye on it.
 
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Thanks. I wish it was possible to turn the auto focus off it's not even really needed once the camera is set up.
 
Well you know the focal point is slightly different in color mode than it is in b/w. Andy said he has brought it to Dahua attention and that we would like the option to lock focus once set. Day profile focus independently adjustable from Night profile, of course.
 
If you have an always-on PC on the same network as the cameras, the DahuaSunriseSunset tool that bp2008 wrote can help by manually switching cameras between day/night profiles as well as refocusing the camera at. It also auto-adjusts the sunrise/sunset times based on your location) and can account for DST automatically. Times can be padded relative to sunrise/sunset if you don’t want the cameras switching literally that minute.

It’ll be great when Dahua fixes the autofocus issue, but seeing as this tool to workaround it has been out for a awhile, I’m not holding my breath about Dahua fixing it anytime soon.
 
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aristobrat said:
If you have an always-on PC on the same network as the cameras, the DahuaSunriseSunset tool that bp2008 wrote can help by manually switching cameras between day/night profiles as well as refocusing the camera at. It also auto-adjusts the sunrise/sunset times based on your location) and can account for DST automatically. Times can be padded relative to sunrise/sunset if you don’t want the cameras switching literally that minute.
Click to expand...

Any chance someone has a how to on this? Thanks
 
Computers have the same ip range as the nvr(192.186.....) but not the cameras, which the nvr assigned 10.x.x ips

Will it work??
 
looney2ns said:
Dahua day/night switch utility - DahuaSunriseSunset
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Thanks for the link. I'm pretty much an idiot when it comes to this type of stuff. Is there a discussion that goes into more detail about setup of the system? I honestly don't know how this works. I understand the cameras have to be connected to a network switch, and then a pc on the network is required, but what software/program is used? Does the Sunrise Sunset software handle everything? Does the video feed from the cameras store on the computer hdd? See, told you I'm an idiot with this stuff lol... That's why I haven't done this. I'd love to, but I'm not sure anyone would be willing to take the time to help me understand what I need to do. I think it's just assumed that you already have the required knowledge to apply the utility.
 
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