Looking to upgrade my 2MP Cameras

HomeAuto87

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By the great advice of this forum, I purchased 4 x IPC-HDW5231R-ZE cameras about 2.5 years ago and mounted them perfectly to cover the areas I need covered. (All mounts are less than 7 feet from the ground).

Now I am looking to upgrade a few of the cameras. Specifically, I'd like to be able to have reach to 100-150 feet with full quality during daylight.

Low-light quality isn't as important because all of my outdoor floodlights are on smart switches and I'm working on having Home Assistant turn on the lights based on motion detected from the cameras. Each flood light mount holds 2 bulbs that are 3,000 lumens each and lights up my camera coverage area quite well.

I also inherited a NAS from work with 32 TB of usable space in a RAID5, which I plan to dedicate solely to the video stream, so space isn't really an issue.

With that all being said, what is considered the latest and greatest for 2021? I'm OK spending up to $500 or so per camera.

Also, given the mounts I already mounted to the house, I'd prefer to stick with Dahua and turret-style cameras if at all possible. However, I'm not against re-doing the setup if there's a better product on the market.

Thanks in advance!
 

sebastiantombs

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The current goto camera is the 5442 series, 4MP on a 1/1.8" sensor. There are several new models out, one a combine IR and color that "blends" the two images to produce aa full color night image, and a couple of 8MP models on 1/1.2" sensors that are also quite good. Between those being new, and still in firmware development, and the chip shortage all are a little hard to get though.

8MP Review

5442 Reviews
 

HomeAuto87

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Thanks for the feedback, I'll need to give these a good thought. When do you think the Dahua 2022 catalog will be released? It would be great if they had an 8MP 1/1.2" sensor on a turret. If it's a few months away, I might as well wait, but if it's ~12 months away, I'll need to make a decision sooner.
 

sebastiantombs

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It's going to be a while before a 8MP, 1/1.2", is available in a turret format. There's a lot more electronics in it plus the lens size being physically bigger, no matter the focal length. It's going to take some serious "packing" to get it into a ball for a turret that isn't the size of a soccer ball.
 

wittaj

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As mentioned, the 5442 series or the new 4K/X are the current go-to, but they are limited in either distance reach or camera style.

At the 100-150 foot range, the best cameras are going to be the 2MP Z12E or a PTZ. The focal length of the better optic sensors just are not large enough yet except on the PTZs.

Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well.
  • 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera
  • 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
  • 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
  • 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
  • 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
  • 49225 PTZ - great PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.
 
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