When to use an 8mp camera

[stevep]

Hi, I have 3 of the excellent IPC-HDW5231R-ZE cameras set up, and seeing how good they are my father has asked me to help him get a system up and running. I will order some of these for him but when or where could you use the 8 mp camera like the IPC-HDW5831R-ZE?? I understand the 2mp starlight is better at night but for day viewing does the 8mp excel ?? Any advice given will be appreciated.

Steve

 

[CrusaderNZ]

Yes, the 8MP cameras are better than the 2MP cameras during the day and the Starlight 2MP models are better than the 8MP models at night.

 

[aristobrat]

I'm guessing here, but an 8MP camera might be useful in a situation where you want the camera to have a wide FOV (i.e. 2.8mm), but need the ability to zoom into the image to see details further away from the camera. For example, I have a 5231 zoomed all the way out to act as an "overview cam" for my backyard. It gets 95% of the backyard in the image, but anything 30+ feet away starts to lack detail. If it were a higher MP camera, it would capture more detail further away from the camera.

To me, a big disadvantage is that the recordings are going to take up much more disk space.

I'm about to replace a 5231 that gives a medium view (I think it's zoomed to about 5mm) of my driveway with a 5631 (6MP). The driveway has some light at night (little light over the garage door, plus some ambient street light). Curious to see how well it does.

 

[stevep]

Thanks for all help, If I set up my dads house he will probably only have about 4 cameras, so If he had a decent amount of storage ie 6tb would an 8mp work ok. I mean are you saying that apart from size of storage there would be no negative to doing this??

 

[aristobrat]

To me, @CrusaderNZ said the biggest negative ... the low-light performance of a 5831 is going to be a lot worse than a 5231.

5831 minimum illumination:
0.05Lux/F1.4 (Color,1/3s,30IRE)
0.2Lux/F1.4 (Color,1/30s,30IRE)

5231 minimum illumination:
0.006Lux/F1.4 ( Color,1/3s,30IRE)
0.05Lux/F1.4 ( Color,1/30s,30IRE)

IMO, a 5831 might make sense in an area that’s got good light 24/7 and there’s a need to zoom into the recordings to get more detail.

Is he just wanting an 8MP camera because he thinks more pixels means a better picture?

 

[stevep]

Hi, thanks again....what i am trying to say is when would most users use a hi mp camera? I totally understand the night time quality as i have the 2mp starlight ones my self. Is it fair to say that 8mp is only good as an extra day time cam ? a luxury item?

 

[bug99]

I have been curious about the storage difference comparison of the two when using H265+ in both cases, maybe to a local uSD on a couple of different day and night scenes. Has anyone done a side by side with similar settings yet, with the purpose of checking the storage usage difference? I suppose that you could even get a pretty good idea even without the local or NVR storage by looking at the main stream kbps and doing a mental average.

The difference in low light is basically 4:1 as @aristobrat shows. this might be a big deal, or it might not. The trade off is This penalty of light and storage/bandwidth basically gives you 2:1 digital zoom in a well lighted scene, which feels to me like 4 cameras for the price of 1.5 cameras.

 

[CrusaderNZ]

I have an 8MP HFW5831E-ZE for my driveway cam - here is a shot from yesterday afternoon and right now - there is no moonlight to assist it at the moment either (because I have 6ft electric gates it doesn't need to be that great at night):


The camera is full zoomed in (optically). The license plate on my neighbours 4WD across the road, is 45m (or 148ft away) - which neither of my previous 2MP or 4MP cams could read.

By the way, the glare in the daytime shot on the right is because it is mounted to the gable on my house, which is painted gloss white.

 

[mat200]

I do like the idea of mixing 8mp and 2mp starlights to cover the front of the house - 8mp is great during the day and "porch pirates" and 2mp for "door checkers" who come at night.

With enough light the 2mp starlight can be kept in color mode at night while the 8mp goes into IR B/W mode - giving you a good combination of color data and form.

 

[aristobrat]

The camera is full zoomed in (optically).

That's better than I expected! The IR looks a lot stronger than what I've seen on the Starlight turrets.

 

[CrusaderNZ]

It is on SmartIR mode. The hedge is reflecting quite a lot, I think it will possibly look even better when I clip the height of hedge down in the next few days.

The IR on the previous 2 cams I had there wasn't even usable - so it is a massive improvement over them in that regard.

 

[fenderman]

That's better than I expected! The IR looks a lot stronger than what I've seen on the Starlight turrets.

be wary of still images the video can look like a mess...I can make a 1/3 sensor hikvsion 4mp camera look like that in a still but the video will be a blur...also the scene has very reflective surfaces...you can see other 4k video and you will see lots of noise...very strong ir can also result in total washout of a face that is close to the camera.

 

[keithl]

I am kind of mixed. I like the resolution of the 8MP cameras and to me if the IR pattern were better I would be happier. To me if my yard is pitch black I don’t see that the Starlight would buy me much except when moonlight might be decent. I have some more testing to do, it I a, thinking the 6MP camera is a good sweet spot. I still have to mount more of my cameras when they arrive next week, but I do plan on Starlight on the porch. I put one in my foyer toward front door, but the thing is too damn sensitive at times and switches between day and night too easily and when it does that the camera darkerns too much and I loose at least a second or more or capture.

 

[fenderman]

I am kind of mixed. I like the resolution of the 8MP cameras and to me if the IR pattern were better I would be happier. To me if my yard is pitch black I don’t see that the Starlight would buy me much except when moonlight might be decent. I have some more testing to do, it I a, thinking the 6MP camera is a good sweet spot. I still have to mount more of my cameras when they arrive next week, but I do plan on Starlight on the porch. I put one in my foyer toward front door, but the thing is too damn sensitive at times and switches between day and night too easily and when it does that the camera darkerns too much and I loose at least a second or more or capture.

Nothing in that paragraph makes any sense...

 

[flynreelow]

I have an 8MP HFW5831E-ZE for my driveway cam - here is a shot from yesterday afternoon and right now - there is no moonlight to assist it at the moment either (because I have 6ft electric gates it doesn't need to be that great at night):


The camera is full zoomed in (optically). The license plate on my neighbours 4WD across the road, is 45m (or 148ft away) - which neither of my previous 2MP or 4MP cams could read.

By the way, the glare in the daytime shot on the right is because it is mounted to the gable on my house, which is painted gloss white.

pictures look great, but would love to see some video samples for day and nighttime....

 

[aristobrat]

I put one in my foyer toward front door, but the thing is too damn sensitive at times and switches between day and night too easily and when it does that the camera darkerns too much and I loose at least a second or more or capture.

I don't know if you have a Windows PC that's powered on all of the time, but if you do, there's a tool someone here wrote that will manually toggle Dahua cameras between day/night modes based on sunrise/sunset times. You can add offsets to those times, if you don't want your cameras all switching literally right at sunrise/sunset. This would allow you to set the night profile for your foyer camera so that it's always in B/W mode between sunset and sunrise. The 5231 also has a sensitivity option which may help it not flip as easily...

 

[CrusaderNZ]

be wary of still images the video can look like a mess...I can make a 1/3 sensor hikvsion 4mp camera look like that in a still but the video will be a blur...also the scene has very reflective surfaces...you can see other 4k video and you will see lots of noise...very strong ir can also result in total washout of a face that is close to the camera.

It is definitely not as good as the nighttime video I've seen of the 2MP Starlights on here. It works well enough in my driveway, but is no good past my gates really - would be a bonus if it did, but not really needed in my situation.

I have an issue with the camera and Blue Iris where the recordings slightly stutter when played back inside BI, and all the settings I used to fix this problem with my other cameras, aren't working for this one. I have direct to disc recording on and a 20MB receive buffer, plus it is recording to an SSD. It is set to H264 (because having it on H265 causes the camera to crash intermittently in BI). It is set to 15FPS (20FPS inside BI) and records at around 1250-1300kB/s - any ideas?

If someone drives past at a reasonable speed I can digitally zoom in like below in BI and read their plates, however a lot of the time it is more of a blur - Didn't seem to make any difference when I dropped the resolution of the camera down and turned up the FPS either.

 

[CrusaderNZ]

pictures look great, but would love to see some video samples for day and nighttime....

Here is a quick daytime one, might take a while for it to be available in 4k on Youtube:
As the picture I posted above, the glare in from the sun reflecting off the gloss white paint on my gable.

 

[keithl]

I don't know if you have a Windows PC that's powered on all of the time, but if you do, there's a tool someone here wrote that will manually toggle Dahua cameras between day/night modes based on sunrise/sunset times. You can add offsets to those times, if you don't want your cameras all switching literally right at sunrise/sunset. This would allow you to set the night profile for your foyer camera so that it's always in B/W mode between sunset and sunrise. The 5231 also has a sensitivity option which may help it not flip as easily...

Thanks, the issue is not a day/night thing as it is indoors. I need to find time to run some test, but seems to be at night when IR is on and if I walk by and trip IVS the camera seems to be going back and forth between total darkness and visible image. I am not sure if there is just enough light reflecting off us as we walk by to trigger the IR off then back on again. I will adjust the sensitivity and IR delay and see what happens. During the day it is fine. I am thinking if I had a non-Starlight camera I would be fine.

 

[bug99]

If someone drives past at a reasonable speed I can digitally zoom in like below in BI and read their plates, however a lot of the time it is more of a blur - Didn't seem to make any difference when I dropped the resolution of the camera down and turned up the FPS either.

The blur is not a function of FPS, rather a function of shutter speed.