Overexposure with IPC-Color4K-T

[quest100]

I set up an IPC-Color4K-T as a sky camera. Works great except the clouds are overexposed during the daytime and I have not been able to decrease the exposure.

At night:


During the day:


I have tried everything to reduce the cloud overexposure - 1/100,000 sec exposure time, gain range of 0-0 or 0-1, and an exposure compensation of 0. I have tried this in Safari, Edge, and Edge in IE mode with the plugin active. I can easily make the overexposure much worse but never improve it.



I see no difference when I set the exposure to 1/30,000 sec but when I go to 1/10,000 sec most of the sky is blown out. Similarly I see no change when I set gain to 0-100, but when I change it to 1-100 I see slightly more blown highlights. So these settings are working.

I guess the bottom line is the Color4K-T is just too sensitive.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah we have seen other posts like this where folks try to use the 4K-T as a sky watch type camera.

It struggles that it cannot run a fast enough shutter. I guess it was never designed for that in mind.

 

[bp2008]

Try various options in the "Backlight" submenu there. "SSA" works decently well on my Color4K-X. If you don't like the look of that on yours, try WDR at various strengths.

 

[quest100]

Try various options in the "Backlight" submenu there. "SSA" works decently well on my Color4K-X. If you don't like the look of that on yours, try WDR at various strengths.

Tried highlight, WDR, and SSA. None of them helped with the blown highlights. At this point I believe the only thing that will help this camera is a neutral density filter. Sorta defeats the purpose of having great night vision!

I may have to switch to one of my older cameras, maybe a HFW4239T. Will lose a lot at night.

 

[quest100]

Yeah we have seen other posts like this where folks try to use the 4K-T as a sky watch type camera.

It struggles that it cannot run a fast enough shutter. I guess it was never designed for that in mind.

I have not seen these posts - will try to search for them. Do the Color4K bullets have the same problem?

It's a shame because the Color4K-T is so close to being perfect for this - maybe one or two stops.

 

[guykuo]

Maybe run two cameras if the dynamic range is too much to cover night and brightest day - like we do camera pairs for LPR / Scenery. With these low power draw cameras, a POE extender / splitter is an easy way to do the wiring for a second cam.

If the 4KT had an iris, it would be an even more amazing camera.

 

[bigredfish]

I'm noticing the same, but just in the past 3-4 weeks... I swear something has changed with the camera.

Settings


On overcast days its pretty good. You can see it adjusting exposure give the range I have set as just as the boat is entering and leaving the scene.
But whites are blowing it out on bright sunny days now.

(You'll also notice the pulsing is back and I'm getting occasional dropped frames when objects hit my IVS-- but thats for another thread.)

View attachment Home_ch5_20240222131053_20240222131109.mp4

 

[bigredfish]

I'm not noticing it on the 4K-X bullet

 

[wittaj]

The 4K-X is the older GUI and the 4K-T is the newer GUI that I think was tweaked for maximum performance in lower light conditions, and unfortunately I think stuck around for the daytime.

 

[bigredfish]

You can see its trying, but it just cant keep the whites from blowing up

View attachment Home_ch5_20240303142723_20240303142748.mp4

 

[looney2ns]

I'm noticing the same, but just in the past 3-4 weeks... I swear something has changed with the camera.

Settings
View attachment 188426 View attachment 188427 View attachment 188428 View attachment 188429 View attachment 188430

On overcast days its pretty good. You can see it adjusting exposure give the range I have set as just as the boat is entering and leaving the scene.
But whites are blowing it out on bright sunny days now.

(You'll also notice the pulsing is back and I'm getting occasional dropped frames when objects hit my IVS-- but thats for another thread.)

View attachment 188433

Maybe due to the sun being higher now, thus brighter.
Can you lower brightness and contrast any to help?

 

[bigredfish]

Maybe, but its been a noticeable ON/OFF type change...

Each day I'm dropping Brightness, Gamma, and faster Exposure little by little to see if I can mitigate it... At the same time, my pulsing has become more pronounced and I'm getting dropped frames on mebbe every 3-4 IVS defections. Those are clearly related to the IVS detects as I can watch them real-time and i get the same output with them from the NVR direct or through SmartPSS.

Guess I need to dumb it down to 2MP and 5FPS

 

[quest100]

Can you lower brightness and contrast any to help?

I tried brightness, contrast, and gamma. Nothing helped with the blown highlights. If only I could set gain to -5...

 

[looney2ns]

I would report this to @EMPIRETECANDY and maybe he can get Dahua to solve this.