Security camera upgrade ??

[Paulieboy]

Hello,

I am going to replace all my Reolink cameras with Amcrest because I have not heard many inspiring things about Reolink but have about Amcrest. Also I have all my cameras mounted 15 to 20 feet high and have read that they should be no more than 10 feet for best quality? Are Amcrest good night time cameras? Is the Field of view good(wide)? Any thoughts, opinions, ideas would be most helpful.

Thank you

 

[wittaj]

Amcrest will certainly be better than the Reolinks, but at 15-20 feet high, they are overview cameras and not IDENTIFY cameras.

Amcrest is made by Dahua, but Amcrest uses less than ideal MP/sensor ratios and cheaper material. The less than ideal MP/sensor ratio results in problems at night. And then they will probably be 2.8 or 3.6mm fixed lens which means all the IDENTIFY distance is lost vertically with the cameras 20 feet high.

Your idea of field of view being wide as good is the rookie mistake with cameras. One camera cannot be the be all, see all.

A mistake too many people make are getting all wide-angle fixed lens see the whole neighborhood. And then the rookie mistake is to hang these on the 2nd story...

It is easy to get lured in to thinking the wide angle "see the whole neighborhood" because you are watching it and you see a neighbor go by and you are like "Look at that I can tell that is Heather out walking." and "Yeah I can tell our neighbor 4 down just passed by". Or you watch back the video of you walking around and are like "yeah I can tell that is me".

Little do we realize how much WE can identify a known person just by hair style, clothing, walking pace, gait, etc.

Then one day the door checker comes by. Total stranger. Totally useless video other than what time the door checking happened.

Then you realize that this wide-angle see the whole neighborhood comes at a cost and that cost is not being able to IDENTIFY who did it. These 2.8mm wide angle cameras are great overview cameras or to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet of the camera. At 40 feet out you need a different camera.

One camera cannot be the be all, see all. Each one is selected for covering a specific area. Most of us here have different brands and types, from fixed cams, to varifocals, to PTZs, each one selected for it's primary purpose and to utilize the strength of that particular camera.

Take a look a this thread that shows the importance of focal length over MP, along with recommendations based on distance:

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[sebastiantombs]

Wide field of view means limited field for identification. A 2.8mm lens will give you a wide field of view but will only identify, reliably, within 15 feet or less of the camera. If the camera is already 15 feet up a 2.8mm lens is useless for identification. Even a 3.6mm will be pretty much useless at that height as will a 6mm lens. All you will identify is the tops of heads.

Amcrest is an OEM brand of Dahua. They're lower priced because they have features stripped from the firmware and are made with lower quality components and housings. I would recommend sticking with Dahua or Hikvision since both are quality, semi-pro or pro grade cameras. You get what you pay for and, as looney2nes says "buy once cry once". You've already experienced low priced performance with Reolink and are replacing them, why do it for yet another cycle?

Remember that every camera needs light to see be it visible, white, light or infrared light. Every camera needs to be "tuned" to produce the best possible picture for the exact location it is installed in. Settings for one camera will not normally apply to another camera even if they are the same make, model and firmware.

Night vision is a function of the sensor size versus sensor resolution. The higher the resolution the bigger the sensor needs to be. The short answer is don't chase megapixels, chase sensor size.

The smaller the lux number the better the low light performance. 0.002 is better than 0.02
The smaller the "F" of the lens the better the low light performance. F1.4 is better than F1.8
The larger the sensor the better the low light performance. 1/1.8" is better (bigger) than 1/2.7"
The higher the megapixels for the same size sensor the worse the low light performance. A 4MP camera with a 1/1.8" sensor will perform better than a 8MP camera with that same 1/1.8" sensor.

Disclaimer - These sizes are what the manufacturers advertise and may, or may not, be the true size of the sensor in the camera.
720P - 1/3" = .333"
2MP - 1/2.8" = .357" (think a .38 caliber bullet)
4MP - 1/1.8" = .555" (bigger than a .50 caliber bullet or ball)
8MP - 1/1.2" = .833" (bigger than a 20mm chain gun round)

Note that 3MP, 5MP and 6MP cameras are not on this list. That is because there is no camera out there with the proper sensor size to produce a good night video that includes motion. To get good motion captures the exposure time, shutter speed, needs to be 1/60 second or better 1/120 second. A 5MP camera with a 1/2.8" sensor will be basically useless at night compared to a 2MP with that same 1/2.8" sensor.

 

[mat200]

Hello,

I am going to replace all my Reolink cameras with Amcrest because I have not heard many inspiring things about Reolink but have about Amcrest. Also I have all my cameras mounted 15 to 20 feet high and have read that they should be no more than 10 feet for best quality? Are Amcrest good night time cameras? Is the Field of view good(wide)? Any thoughts, opinions, ideas would be most helpful.

Thank you

Hi Paulieboy,

Amcrest is iirc one of the vendors in our vendor section and their IP PoE cameras are Dahua OEM.

Remember to look for camera models with larger sensors ... Amcrest iirc had a few larger sensor models available.

 

[The Automation Guy]

The other downside to having the camera so high is that you only see a top down view of people when they are close to the camera. Sure you might be able to see more of a straight on shot when they are far away from the camera, but the camera won't provide clear enough footage to identify someone. As they get closer to the camera, you will loose the "head on" image and get more of a "looking down on them" image.

A camera that is mounted 6' tall will generally always provide a "head on" image, even when the subject is very close to the camera which is the best time to identify someone because the closer a subject is to the camera, the more detailed footage you will get.

 

[Flintstone61]

Here are a couple inexpensive Amcrests. IP5M-1179EW's. they do ok in certain situations. I would not buy 8 and use them all over the house because they are easy to manually turn with your barehand.
One is in the garage above a door. thats about 81 inches and a low as I have room for. Not every cam can be perfectly placed in every situation,
The front door cam is at 4 feet high when you are standing on the porch, and head high when your standing on the sidewalk.

 

[fenderman]

Hello,

I am going to replace all my Reolink cameras with Amcrest because I have not heard many inspiring things about Reolink but have about Amcrest. Also I have all my cameras mounted 15 to 20 feet high and have read that they should be no more than 10 feet for best quality? Are Amcrest good night time cameras? Is the Field of view good(wide)? Any thoughts, opinions, ideas would be most helpful.

Thank you

The brand of the camera is irrelevant for good night vision. Amcrest cameras are made by dahua and both have cams that are good at night and many that are terrible - even worse than your reolinks. So as others mentions you need to focus on the specs. Every brand has cams that will perform well at night and cams that will be terrible.

 

[Flintstone61]

Probably another jackass phony sent by the ReoBlink marketing team.