First, I live in a suburban area with street lights. One of the cameras will point toward the street in front of my house, and at my driveway in particular. One camera will be in back of the house pointing toward my back fence. On one side of the backyard, there is another major street with street lights, the other side is a neighbor with no light coming from that side. There is always enough light to walk without stumbling over things in the dark. At night with no moon, I can see stars directly overhead, but they are pretty much washed out by ambient light about 1/3 up from the horizon.
I would be open to a decent I/R CAM as well. I had bought a CMOS I/R (Swann DODC) for the front driveway view just to get started with but was disappointed with the video quality.