Thanks for the tips
@wxman . I will have plenty of terrain in the view as I'll mainly be looking out at the horizon and occasionally trying to spot wildlife out in the open space. It's tempting to go with the cheaper SD49225U as I really don't have any need for auto tracking in this location. The only thing I think may be useful is the image stabilization. I will be mounting it to the side of my house but its pretty common to have heavy wind here. So basically I'd be going for the 30x zoom and the image stabilization if I go with something like the SD59430U. Nearly double the cost of the SD49225U though
Anytime! Glad to help!
As far as wildlife goes, I have gotten some really good shots there with the Dahua. Although most of the time, I have to manually focus when zooming up close to wildlife. For some reason, when I zoom in on an animal, the auto focus likes to focus on the grass/trees behind the animal. In some cases, if I draw a "regional focus" box over just the animal, it will readjust and focus correctly on the animal. Sometimes even that doesn't work and I have to hold down on the "+" focus sign until it comes into focus. Sometimes this may take 20 seconds or more and many times the animal moves out of the picture before I can get the focus...but as long as they stay still long enough for me to get a focus, then I can get some fairly impressive shots...
A few examples....Again, I stress, you probably won't be able to just stick the cam up and start snapping shots like these...It takes a bit of effort and a lot of trial and error, but with patience and a little basic photography knowledge, this is some examples of what can be accomplished.