JulieX

The minimum distance is about 20 feet, the maximum about 100 feet. 45 degrees should cover everything in the lot. How about the Panasonic line?

Thanks for the reply. I looked at your website and notice that it has a lot of Optiview products. Is there a big difference with their quality? The prices don't seem much more than the Q-See and Swann. After a quick glance through the products, came up with the ECO-4 teamed with the CL-550. Would that do the trick? I should say that at night, this parking lot is well lit. But don't some cameras switch automatically to B&W if ambient light is too low for color? What about the Panasonic line? Thanks again to everyone.

We use a parking lot one block away for company vehicles, and we'd like to monitor it with a video camera with a DVR for recording. The lot is already well illuminated at night. The owner of the building adjacent to the parking lot has agreed to let us use their building to do this, including mounting a camera on the side of their building. Since the location is not physically adjacent to ours, a direct connection between it and our offices is not possible. And there is no line-of-sight, so wireless is out. Since both locations have a working DSL connection, I'm thinking of installing a good camera with its own DVR at that location, and access the DVR as needed from our offices over the Internet. How does that sound? Any better solution? I was looking at some equipment and see DVR's start with 4 camera inputs as opposed to a single one, which is all we need for the one camera. (There will never be more than one camera there.) Is the $450 or so wanted for brands like Q-See and Swann typical? Are they worthwhile brands? The DVR will have to be IP addressable. What about the camera? Color would be nice, and those seem to be around $250, again for the same brands. I'm not terribly constrained by budget, so I'm willing to spend more for a worthwhile and tangible benefit. Any comments and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.