Several issues:
- You need to get it off of auto shutter. Almost every camera can give a good static image, but we need good motion image. You only looked good with detail because you stopped. Once you moved it was a blur. A door checker will not stop to let you get a good capture
- This camera is not designed to identify that far out by the street. Depending on which fixed lens you got, it is more like 10 feet out for 2.8mm lens.
- The gain and NR is too high, coupled with the slower auto shutter is why it ghosted.
- Do not use backlight - try to get the camera dialed in with every other setting first. That is also contributing to the blur.
- Once you dial in the settings for the optimal focus distance of this fixed cam, you probably will not catch a lot out by the street.
- One camera cannot be the do all, see all. If you want coverage out at the street, then you need an additional camera designed to capture IDENTIFY video and images at that distance. That would be a varifocal camera.
Take it off auto settings at night unless you like seeing Casper. Auto settings in most situations for shutter will produce a great picture, but motion is complete crap with blurring and ghosting.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual priority and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more and gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting.
Now what you will notice that happens immediately is your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night image results in Casper during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
So if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 30ms as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent), but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images.