Need some advice with cameras and locations

[matchewready]

I’m hoping you guys can give me some camera and camera location ideas for the front of my house. I’m testing an Amcrest 8mp T2449EB 2.8mm turret location center of the garage now that gives me a great shot of both cars. Turning it to the front door gives me a good shot of the front door with a little porch light blowout. It’s about 9’ high right now. I know it’s best to have them lower just not sure where?

I originally wanted one above the window left of the front door but the door porch light was blowing out the vid at night and it was 9’ off the ground.

The pic I took from the right side of the front door gave me a pretty good night vid so I may go with one cam above the first window right of front door. I would think with a house shaped like a basic rectangle it would be easy to set up but I’m not real impressed with my locations so far. Seems like with the 2.8mm turret I get a lot of IR reflecting of the house when turning the lens hard left or right.

The 2.8mm lens seems a bit wide when turning to the front door. I still need to buy a couple more cameras. The one I have needs a lot of “area” light to get good pics at night and the IR tends to wash out faces. So recommendations for camera and mm lens for my location would be helpful as well. I appreciate any ideas you guys might have.

 

[sebastiantombs]

A 2.8mm lens on a single camera, even an 8MP camera, will not give you enough detail to identify anyone unless they're within six or eight feet of the camera and facing it directly. The general rule of thumb for driveway cameras is to have two, one on each side, facing angles toward each other and no higher than the top of the garage door.

Look in the Wiki, in the blue bar at the top of the page. Read the material in there it will help you make better choices regarding cameras and camera locations. One trick is to buy one varifocal camera. Attach that to a test rig and put it at each location to check both the location and focal length needed at that location. Broad, sweeping views are attractive but are not useful for identification.

Another tip is not to chase megapixels especially for low light applications. Chase the sensor size. Right now the preferred cameras are 4MP with a 1/1.8" sensor. That same configuration in an 8MP camera will not perform nearly as well under low light conditions.