Help tweaking 4K-T

[CCTVCam]

Promised you my current night time settings for my rear yard camera:

Style - Standard
Brightness 50
Contrast 50
Saturation 56
Sharpness 45
Gamma 50
Image Outdoor
Mode Manual
Shutter custom
Shutter 0-8
Gain 0-50
Exposure comp 50
3d NR on
3d NR 50
2d NR 50

With a 5w LED it produces a good quality picture, although I have a 3,000 lumen floodlight to reinforce it on a pir. The 5w led is within 10 feet of the camera.

You appear to have plenty of lumens from the street light to maybe run some decent colour settings. It's just the color temp that's a real issue.

 

[biggen]

Promised you my current night time settings for my rear yard camera:

Style - Standard
Brightness 50
Contrast 50
Saturation 56
Sharpness 45
Gamma 50
Image Outdoor
Mode Manual
Shutter custom
Shutter 0-8
Gain 0-50
Exposure comp 50
3d NR on
3d NR 50
2d NR 50

With a 5w LED it produces a good quality picture, although I have a 3,000 lumen floodlight to reinforce it on a pir. The 5w led is within 10 feet of the camera.

You appear to have plenty of lumens from the street light to maybe run some decent colour settings. It's just the color temp that's a real issue.

I want more focal length. I have a Vari focal 5442 on the way that will help with that. Hopefully I can get it up this week and I’ll start another thread on that to see how it compares to this camera.

Thanks for those settings!

 

[biggen]

I have the new 5442 varifocal up. Here is the FOV difference between the two:

5442 Varifocal at max 12mm zoom:


4k-T 3.6mm:



So I think if that street lamp can throw enough light out I should be able to capture pretty clear faces at this zoom/focal length. I'll also be able to determine if the horizontal rolling bands are from the street lamp or the 4k-T. I'll update this post later tonight with results.

Also WDR just makes a mess of the daytime images. Both of these images were taken with WDR turned on for each camera. It's too cartoony and vivid when running it on the 4k-T and the scene/colors are washed out entirely on the 5442 even with it set all the way down to 10.

 

[bigredfish]

Agree, i think you made a good choice.
And also agree with WDR in general. I hate how it washes out a scene, and it can introduce motion blur. It seems especially overdone on the 4K's. I try not to use it unless absolutely necessary.

 

[biggen]

So of course I don't get anyone walking on the sidewalk last night between sunset and sunrise. I still played around with the settings and the white balance to try and remove the yellow hue from the street lamp.

Here is a screen capture from UI 3 (not an actual exported .mp4):


That is a fixed shutter at 1/120 at full zoom. Brightness at 55, Contrast at 55, and Gain 0 - 55. White balance is manual with Red at 0 and Blue is all the way up to 90. If I give the image any red slider at all the orange/red of the street lamp begins to come back in. With this WB settings, I have to make sure the camera switches back to the Daytime settings with WB set to "auto" 30 minutes before sunrise or the image turns blue real fast as the sun begins to rise.

Also I am not getting any rolling horizontal bands with this camera like I did with the 4k-T. I tried a fixed shutter at 1/100 and saw no bands at all.

The light gathering ability of the 4k-T vs the 5442 is far superior. However, I'm also at full zoom of 12mm so I'm guessing I'm probably at a full stop slower than what the 4k-T was at 3.6mm. I wish Dahua would give fstop numbers for different telephoto settings.

Tonight I'll walk under the light myself if I don't get anyone on the sidewalk. Was too tired to mess with it fully last night.

 

[CCTVCam]

Forget WDR. If you have a backlight situation causing high dynamic range, I suggest using BLC instead. It's excellent when used in custom settings which involves drawing a box around the blown out area and selecting this for compensation. In neither of the above photos above do I see a backlight situation though. It's also not suitable for night use.

 

[biggen]

I got two decent profile shots last night. Still no one walking towards the camera from right to left. At least I think I have the white balance straightened out. Have it set on Manual with Red at 0 and Blue at 100. That seems to get rid of most of the yellow cast from the street lamp. I have the Gain at 0 - 55, Brightness 55, and Contrast at 55. Fixed shutter at 1/120. Full zoom. The jogger's feet are somewhat blurred from running but I think his face would have been visible had he been coming from the other direction.

I'm thinking about panning the camera slightly to the right. That way I would catch more of their faces as they approach the street lamp from the right. Right now, I'm left with mostly a profile shot.

 

[CCTVCam]

It looks like there's still too much gain at play. I'm guessing it pegged at 55 from the ghosting / strobing. It's interesting to note the strobing is on motion and not the static image which is why I think gain is the major player here.

 

[biggen]

It looks like there's still too much gain at play. I'm guessing it pegged at 55 from the ghosting / strobing. It's interesting to note the strobing is on motion and not the static image which is why I think gain is the major player here.

I can back it back down to 50 tonight and see if it makes a difference.

 

[CCTVCam]

Some cameras don't like over 40-45 if I remember rightly from posts on here from more experienced users. Trial and error might be the only way forwards. I'm surprised by just how much darker it is than the 4kt.

 

[biggen]

Some cameras don't like over 40-45 if I remember rightly from posts on here from more experienced users. Trial and error might be the only way forwards. I'm surprised by just how much darker it is than the 4kt.

Yeah it’s loads darker at full zoom. I think I’ll pan it right just a bit to get the center of the lens more inline with the lamp light. The optical quality of the lens should be greater there than the edge.

I don’t think much more can be done with this camera with the amount of light coming from the lamp. Hopefully Dahua can come up with a 6mm variant if the 4k-T that also doesn’t have a ridiculously long minimum focus distance.

 

[Evroul]

Yeah try dropping brightness to 35 and then work up from there. And have contrast be 8 points or so higher than brightness.

I think those two changes, coupled with a fixed shutter speed will get you a lot closer.

I have had to run fixed shutters on a few cams as well. Unfortunately it means a small period of time of washout at sunrise, but the night performance improved tremendously with the fixed shutter over a range.

Would 1/100 be ok for no blur or is 1/120 the magic line not to go under ? (Night)

 

[wittaj]

Would 1/100 be ok for no blur or is 1/120 the magic line not to go under ? (Night)

The faster the better, but the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. If you run too fast a shutter for the available light then you get noise and other issues that negate the faster shutter.

1/60 is the minimum that can clean capture someone on a light walk. 1/120 does better. But 1/100 can work, but there will be situations where you will get some blur.

 

[Evroul]

The faster the better, but the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. If you run too fast a shutter for the available light then you get noise and other issues that negate the faster shutter.

1/60 is the minimum that can clean capture someone on a light walk. 1/120 does better. But 1/100 can work, but there will be situations where you will get some blur.

Thats great. Reason I'm asking is because at night all my LED under suffit or my floodlight LEDS which I have had ages before getting Andys great cameras flicker at almost everything but 1/100

Or Using 50hz which is for EU, but then again I can go no higher than 1/100 anyway. It bugs me. I have seen alot of posts here with guys having floodlights on incl. your self with that neighbour mask picture.

I have alot of floodlight at the terrasse, backyard etc, BUT ... flicker like a techno party if under ms 10 or ye 1/100

What lights are those or as Im guessing youre in US im not

 

[wittaj]

Yeah using the anti-flicker 60 or 50Hz purposely blocks people from going any faster as that is when you get the weird stuff with the LED lights. So it isn't a good feature to use because it also blocks or limits a few other features/options as well.

My floodlights are LED. I get a bit of that flicker/rolling wave running a faster shutter. I live with it. I am not making Hollywood movies - I want a clean capture of the perp. The rolling wave or LED flicker isn't going to impact my ability to get a clean capture of a perp, but running a slower shutter so that I don't see that LED phenomenon will. I would rather have the faster shutter and a little LED flicker/wave.

 

[Evroul]

Yeah using the anti-flicker 60 or 50Hz purposely blocks people from going any faster as that is when you get the weird stuff with the LED lights. So it isn't a good feature to use because it also blocks or limits a few other features/options as well.

My floodlights are LED. I get a bit of that flicker/rolling wave running a faster shutter. I live with it. I am not making Hollywood movies - I want a clean capture of the perp. The rolling wave or LED flicker isn't going to impact my ability to get a clean capture of a perp, but running a slower shutter so that I don't see that LED phenomenon will. I would rather have the faster shutter and a little LED flicker/wave.

Ok ty for feedback

I seem to understand that setting fixed at 1/120 is better than doing 0-8.33. Is that because camera then uses the full range based on light etc?

Just to get a clear understanding of that

 

[wittaj]

In some situations you have to use a range based on differing light situations or the image could wash out if the shutter is too slow.

But whenever you can force the camera to use a fixed setting instead of range, you tend to get less artifacts.

And it really is field of view dependent - some of my cams are fixed parameters and some are ranges.