add low lighting to enhance WDR

[AngieTexas]

This is a crop of two people walking a small dog at 5AM. Exported from Amcrest Surveillance Pro software.
Is this the quality image to expect from these IP8M-2597EW-4MM?

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Quite Disappointing... It's no better than the Foscam FI8905 it replaced.

I SURE HOPE this can be improved!

Please help...

[AngieTexas]

This is what sold me on the cameras...

Daytime crop, same area, exported from Surveillance Pro.

Daytime-(crop).jpg

It's a fantastic. high resolution, zoom-able image...

Why can't I get something like that at night, with low light?

Thanks so much!!!!

[Revo2Maxx]

Yes sadly that is what I was thinking it would do with WDR on at night in a Poor light area... Again I am not promoting not to get cameras with features like WDR just for all that I have done on my systems and all the cameras that I have owned and still own with True Night and Low Light and WDR and all the cool bells and Whistles WDR is not going to work in the no light area you have... Day time would look very nice as your picture shows but to me still little on the dark side.. I am not sure if your picture is zoomed in already but if it is normal sized I would say look at the picture and a good area to show that there was some capture issue is on the ladys face it looks like she might be wearing a face mask but that area is kind of pixelated this again is caused by the camera requiring to much time for capture...

I would if it was me. use the IR or buy a Solar security light.. I can't find the one I bought anywhere but I swear by it.. I really need to take it and install it where the pictures I have taken so you can see what it can and will do in both modes. When there is no motion in standby mode it is lit just not very bright then when motion is detected and as I said my Dog and the one I am talking about is a Mini Pincher so she is small and she can set it off.. I have it mounted at 9 feet from the ground.. I would get a light like that I have seen others just like it offered on Ebay and Amazon for less then what I paid for mine.. Main reason I bought it was so I could build my own IR lights using the light housing but I was so impressed that I said I will wait until it dies lol..

Anyway if you don't need a 2 bulb setup I would just go for the 1 front facing unit.. To be fair I would say if you have a lot of Foot Traffic in that area maybe Solar isn't going to be the way to go however they do still have some LED 110 units that would flood the area with light on motion and not cost to much to run until the the Power Companies start Charging for what a Home would cost to run rather then what it does cost to run.. Cost on a nice bright unit running on 110 might be about 23watts yet it would be on motion so it wouldn't be to costly.. If you don't need a Extreme bright light they have them 10 even that one that I have on the car side is 10watt and they have them with motion just cost more then what I paid for mine.. But they also have 110v 10watt version as well. However to be honest I would look for one that has 1/2 bright or 1/4 bright when in stand by so people are not shocked when the light comes on.. Also wouldn't mount it in the area of the camera so if people do look at it they are not looking at the camera if your trying to not draw attention to yours.. I personally think in areas they can see them let them Be seen... I know for sure I have stopped someone that was going to be up to no good when he started around his car and looked up and seen my Cluster of cameras pointing at them mumbling something before getting back in his car and driving off... I have large Warning signs for both Video and Audio...

[AngieTexas]

Thanks, you are awesome with your help.

I have to get some sleep,lol, been playing with settings all night.

There are General, Day and Night preference settings, is the idea to set a general, day and night setting for Picture,
Exposure, BLC Mode, WB, Day & Night and IR Light?

Meaning, it it is night, and I change the settings for Day or General, I won't see those changes until the are used, daytime, is that correct?

Thanks so much!

[Revo2Maxx]

That is the area where you would want to setup night and day.. So for day time you could have it setup for WDR and abc for settings then at the night settings you could have it setup for WDR off and no BLC options and other changes within the settings of the camera for night time and then under schedule of that area is where you tell it what times you want it to be day and or night... Or you can set up a General all the time settings and pick just run General Profile and so on.. I mean you can have it pick whatever profile you want to run and have it only run that profile as well I am just saying the General is a 3 rule that some use as a Main and only run setting for both day and night... Also could be setup for Winter running because I can tell you that where I live when it has snow the outside looks like it is early day or early night with it being bright without much light and could run in that 3 option full time for the winter time.. That is how I have one of my outdoor cameras.. There is still some nights that I will switch back when needed like this last winter didn't have much Snow on the ground so I kept that camera on Day/Night changed the times to reflect the early lights down and late up...

Anyway I took some pictures of my Can Lights I have installed.. The LEDS that are in the bulb are placed this way for best light for my use... The LEDs that was in there didn't put out enough light so I took the junk they had in there bulb made my own and used the little bulb housing.. I have it setup on paper as being a 12w but when I tested it I might have to large of a Resistor behind the plate because it was only using 9w and the power factor was not so good but testing this light with a 9w GE led mine was much brighter.. With the way things are going today I would just look into buying a LED like GE or some other UL listed brand the prices are going down and the quality and life of them are going up. plus they are Sealed and can't access them like I can mine. I don't expect anyone other then myself to use my LEDs..

The outdoor light you can see the motion sensor it is on both sides and at first when I bought the light I was really only buying it for the outdoor housing to make my own LED light in it but again liked this setup so much I have not taking it apart to setup my own in it as of yet... As soon as it dies I will put my own LEDS in the system and might turn it over to 12v rather then solar..

Solar Motion light with 2 led array and there own Motion sensor in each light

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My 12w LED that is un-covered

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The Led with Cover in place yes sadly this was taken before I cleaned out the bugs.. There are large holes on the back of the bulb to help cool led lights..

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[AngieTexas]

I am still a bit confused. I set a General, Day and Night profile for each individual camera and when it came time, the cameras did not switch into night mode. I left it over an hour and still nothing, I had to manually switch the cameras from Day to Night mode. Is that they way it is suppose to be? Just doesn't seem right to me.

While I love the view of the WDR, it doesn't fair well at all in playback mode.

I ordered two IR Eluminators. Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07STM1L96/

Even though the cameras state 164ft night vision, I bet, it is less then 50% of that.

I started this venture all excited, guess I was expecting technology that just isn't there yet. Using Bata Software that has issues but is better than the WEB UI or alternative cloud. Having to add additional IR because the IR provided isn't what is expected. Looking forward to using technology like WDR, only to find it is not always helpful, rather more of a hindrance.

I will see if things improve when the IR Eliminators get here.

Have a great Memorial Day, Stay safe and healthy!

[Revo2Maxx]

Yes sadly maybe I missed saying that once you have day and night setup you need to click on the schedule and tell the camera that you want to run day from 6am to 9pm then night will run the test of the time...

So bring up the camera, Then go to Setup, Then you will be under Camera Configuration next to that is Profile Management click that, then you will have the option for General Full time and Schedule click on Schedule, Then you will want to move the little bars at are on 00 and 24 to say 6am on the left side and 21 on the right side or what ever you want to set it on Black is Night time and Day is in Blue Press save...

[AngieTexas]

OMG, It all makes sense now. Thank you so much!!!

I will play with it.... Nice....

IR Lighting does not enhance "color" at all right?

There is an Exposure setting, that adjusts shutter speed, that is set to auto. Should I leave that alone or will changing it help improve image quality?

Thanks again, You are an angel!!!

[Revo2Maxx]

Well there are some cameras out there that I will admit I have owned as well that color and IR can work at the same time.. Sadly this is not a True Day/Night camera with a ICR (Infrared Cut Removable Filter) infact they have a dual colored lens that sits after the real lens before the censor. However a really good camera will have this Cut Filter and it has a small lens can be plastic that has a Faint Green and a Red. At night there is a little motor that moves the filter from the one that runs at day time to the one that runs at night... When you hear your IR come on the CLICK it is the filter moving

So a Good camera will need to be in B/W for the IR to work...

About the Shutter speeds I would keep them as Auto. There are times that it can be helpful but most times it will only hinder your cameras ability to get good pictures... So there are some things that some cameras can do. Like one of my IP cameras has the Option for Auto, Manual, Motion Blur and low noise. So manual you can change the settings from 1/3 to 1/100000 However it does offer a Customized Range and that lets me pick between shutter speed ranges of 0-300ms and gain control of 0-100.. Low Noise just gives me a gain control bar.. Low Motion Blur gives me a 1/30 to 1/30000 with a customized setting as well only 0-33.33ms options... For shutter most times it is at 1/30 the lower the number like my camera I can do 1/3 however it will be VERY blurry on motion.. If I do say 1/300000 it would be so dark that it might pick up 2 head lights on high beams coming down the road but the car wouldn't be able to be seen..

So the issue about the IR that is built in...

You may or may not have seen the settings for it.. They are most times setup for Smart IR and as such your not going to notice the Bright IR light that you would have you changed the IR light setting to manual.. It will most times or on all my Amcrest Cameras give you a little bar that starts out at 50% most times.. you can move that to 100% and the IR will be brighter to the camera and you may be able to see the dim lit IR some what brighter to your eye as well... Some of my Cameras don't even have the option to turn them off so it is good Amcrest has the ability to turn them off, Smart IR and manual option... When you run your Ext IR I would personally have the Camera IR off...

[Revo2Maxx]

So I thought i would show what a Camera without a IRC looks like that can run at night in B/W... This is the CCD from my 2005 27x zoom camera from my PTZ dome.. Sadly I can fix a lot of things but when it comes to cameras CCD sensors going out I am not sure where to buy one so I just replaced the module and took this one apart for my brain Education lol... Anyway this PTZ is older didn't have built in IR and wasn't as costly as some of my other PTZ domes that have better hardware in them...

So camera had this lens infront of the CCD... This unit used software inside the hardware to work the B/W and as such the lens would detect IR at night and because of the coating and software it had good color at day time... I took a picture of this lens to show the Green color and the pink color. If you get a camera at some point that the color at day times makes trees look pink that is because the IRC is not working and has not removed the night time lens from the sensor and it is running the camera in color with the IRC over the sensor.. Repair can be made to replace the filter... That is because that camera with real irc isn't setup by software to work with that filter in place...
These pictures were taken a while ago I resized them to something better then the 2mb that they were.. Anyway I thought it might better explain what I was talking about when you asked about IR light working in a COLOR camera.. now there are some cameras out there that can work in Total Darkness and with IR and software can make some light that the camera can detect but the ones I have had was a Faint green color in that mode...

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