<Moved post to
hardware>
Does anyone have a good feel for the light output per LED at some useful distance as it relates to camera shutter speed? I am not sure that LUX is a good measure at 850nm, as i expect that the camera is way more sensitive to 850nm than to visible light of the same lux rating (just a guess), but a LUX meter is what i have so there is that. What i was thinking is this: does one 1W LED produce about the equivalent of a 100LUX LED bulb (or that amount of sun) at say 25 ft from a camera (assume a Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)) if both are in B&W mode? Has anyone done any crude comparing of this?
It would be nice to have a rough feel for how fast the shutter/low the gain can be for a given amount of IR, to decide what to buy. I have a couple of large (very dark at night) indoor spaces, and was thinking about options.
Note: One nice thing about external
IR light is that it is off angle from the camera, thus increasing the depth of field and reducing the hot spot glare.
p.s. I did not mean to hijack this thread. I can start a new one if that is better. This post got me thinking about this again...