Cooperman

Not many peanut sellers around these parts rory; just plenty of nuts! bryan 1656, you're beginning to frighten me kaysadeya, so that's what it means! Great link

It kinda proves the point rory; you can get the best out of everyday gear just based on your experience. Give all the new toys to someone with little experience, and the results will undoubtedly be inferior.

You guys really take the biscuit So rory, what the heck are JWs, PSs, and DDs...????

... any vacancies for floor sweepers?

Probably not rory, but then I don't think you need to worry too much about being top of the list for possible terrorist attacks. Still at least we've got all those CCTV cameras watching our backs!

Kaysadeya, you shouldn't need to look at optically corrected glass. Most housing windows are either, standard 'float' glass (4 - 6mm thick) available from glass merchants / dealers, or 'lexan' / polycarbonate plastic, which has good impact resistance, but does scratch and weather with age. Both allow clear viewing under IR conditions. There seems to be some general view that using Infra Red is something of a 'black' art (pun intended). In practice, IR frequencies behave in precisely the same way as visible frequencies, it's just that there generally isn't the quantity / quality of lighting that would normally be experienced with 'white' lighting. Also, with most optics, there is a focus shift which is down to the lens glass bending the invisible frequencies at an ever so slight difference to visible frequencies. In most situations, if a compromise focus is set for both lighting conditions (at maximum aperture), then the correct focus can be achieved for both by increasing the depth of field (i.e. closing the lens aperture one or two stops). It's worth considering that affordable IR corrected lenses are a relatively new product, and for forty years or so, engineers / installers had to know how to get the best out of what was available then. Just realised, this is a bit more info then you were looking for, but hey, it's late, I'm tired, you never know it might be of interest

Not sure the Greater Manchester Police would necessarily agree rory From what I can gather, a beret has much the same effect in France As it happens, all handguns are banned in the U.K., even long established shooting clubs had their entire stocks destroyed not so long ago (apart of course from the ones which have ended up in the wrong hands!!).

We're still allowed to carry sharp pencils in our pocket over here, but other than that, nothing else. Slightly off topic, there is an interesting court case pending at the moment, where a businessman was stopped driving home for a minor traffic offence. When the Police searched his locked briefcase (which was in the boot / trunk of his car), they found a small penknife (pocket knife). He was charged with being in possession of an offensive weapon, which on conviction, could get him a prison sentence

kaysadeya, The enlarger glass is almost certainly designed to reduce heat from the lamp, passing through the delicate negative. On larger format film materials, if the 'neg' gets hot it will buckle, and at the very least go out of focus (or fry!). The way the glass reduces the heat passing through is ...... by filtering out the Infra Red The point about B/W imagers is that unfiltered, they will have some sensitivity to IR, although the spectral response will vary from one to another. Some older model CCD cameras were deliberately fitted with IR block filters, most of which could be removed, if necessary. I've still got one old 1/2" CCD camera which 'filter out' will work up to around 1150nM (albeit with a very low response).

ABSOLUTELY NOT unless you have a fire extinguisher on standby! The Black wire and the White wire are your 24v supply leads. They are not polarity specific so it doesn't matter which way round you connect them to the transformer. Only connect to the transformer if you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, that the terminals are your 24v output, otherwise your camera could be wrecked. If in doubt, see if you can borrow (or buy) a basic test meter to measure the voltage on each terminal. The Green / Yellow Earth (ground) wire must only ever be connected to a suitably marked ground terminal. If in doubt DO NOT connect to anything, until you've had some advice from someone who knows.

cam2, Are you intending to use the camera covertly? Just out of interest, do you have a link to the camera you have in mind? If you want to use a camera internally with Infra Red, the quantity of light will depend on the size of the room, and the sensitivity of the camera. If it's a 1/4" colour camera, it's probably not the right one for you. As regards the location for an I/R lamp, for most internal applications it's best to bounce the light off the ceiling, provided your illuminator has sufficient output

Great advice bryan 1656, A suggestion to add to your list is .... which way does the sun travel across the sky. Too often cameras are installed pointing directly towards the sun, with inevitable problems. One thing worth trying with daylight problems on a B/W camera; if there is plenty of sensitivity in low light and I/R is not being used, try fitting a 'thin' blue filter over the lens (thin as in very light colour, not the physical thickness!). For test purposes, you can pick up 'gel' filters very cheaply from a photographic dealer. This will act as an IR block filter and whilst it won't significantly affect the cameras low end sensitivity, it should help redress the problems caused by intense IR reflectance, in mixed bright sunlight / shade conditions.

Rory, you could always get your favourite Sanyo's .....

CS describes the lens mount on a conventional camera. 'C' and 'CS' are both physically identical, but with a 'CS' mount you can fit any CS, or C (with a 5mm adaptor) mount lens. C mount cameras (mostly older models) can only accept C mount lenses. Regarding lighting, whether it be visible or Infra Red, the further the light source from the area you are viewing, the greater the light output required to achieve a decent picture. If you think about lighting an object on a tabletop with a torch, you should get a reasonably good image. If you put the same object in the back yard, and hold the torch 100' away, the results may be ever so slightly different Colour cameras can be used with low level (preferably even) lighting, and under the same conditions, a Black and White camera will also exploit any IR frequencies being radiated, to produce a 'stronger' response than a colour unit. It is a common mistake to automatically assume that the options are simply, high intensity floodlighting or Infra Red, and nothing else can be considered. With solid state LED illuminators, in theory if the manufacturer slightly under runs the diodes, they (being solid state components) should reasonably last as long as the camera components. In practice, the LED's are often driven at the limit of their performance to maximise IR emmission, and this is what generally leads to premature failure. As rory says, no conventional CCTV camera will see in pitch dark, some visible light (for colour) or IR light (for B&W) is required; although of course, hugely expensive intensifier cameras can produce images in virtually zero illumination (sub starlight). VST_Man, trust me for being so slow, I missed seeing the horses

I just had a quick look through a major CCTV Distributors catalogue, and they run 21 different brands of DVR - No GE and No Kalatel. Personally I've never seen a Kalatel DVR here in the U.K., but that's not to say they are not available somewhere. We've got the major trade show IFSEC coming up next month, so it will be interesting to see if they are at the event. Incidentally, a 'Metal Mickey' is a miniature PTZ camera, increasingly being used for 'Town Centre' schemes, in place of conventional / dome assemblies. Now if I remember correctly, "Metal Mickey" the robot, had a link with a former member of the Monkees pop group (talk about going off topic ).

If you're talking about an Infra Red 'corrected' lens, then that will not have any effect on a cameras sensitivity to Infra Red light.

Hey rory, I think the point MetzLyov is trying to get across is actually quite an interesting one. As this is a global forum, with members of differing abilities spread around the world, the markets and conditions are inevitably going to vary whether they're in the States, Australia, UK or the Bahamas (or indeed anywhere else in between). As a highly respected member of the forum, there is inevitably a degree of responsibility that whatever you (or for that matter any of us) post, is reasonably accurate in content. Sure it's not meant to be hard work, but look at how many people you've helped with your advice and comments thus far. Of course, any posting is inevitably opinion rather than necessarily concrete fact, but for the benefit of those guys who are less clued up on this technology, it doesn't really hurt to try and be accurate when discussing specific makes and models. After all, you've got shed loads of equipment over there which we will never see. Likewise, there is a wide range of products this side of the pond, which will rarely if ever manage to cross the Atlantic. Hands up anyone who knows what a "Metal Mickey" is....?

The biggest problem I find with a lot of clients, is they don't understand what they're buying, and perhaps more depressingly, a significant percentage have absolutely no interest "as long as it does the job". bryan 1656, I can relate to an awful lot of what you're saying. There is often an assumption that because a company throws a lot of money into their CCTV, then it must automatically be 'state of the art'. In practice it's often 'in no fit state'. Nothing to do with the available budget, or even in some cases the choice of equipment, it's fundamentally the case that the installers acting on the clients instructions just doesn't know how to make it work properly. kaysadeya, as a motivated end user, you want to do the best you can on a limited budget, and much of what you say makes absolute sense. Interestingly enough, I'm doing a covert job for someone at the moment, and out of curiosity I went along to a local 'shop' to see what toys they had on the shelf. I had a play around with a 400 line B&W lipstick size bullet camera, and quite honestly I couldn't see any difference in picture quality between this $ 70 unit, and a 3 year old $ 250 conventional camera (there was a noticeable reduction in exposure control, but nothing that couldn't be tolerated for the price). True you can change the lens (and optimise it) on a 'CS' camera, which you can't do on the bullet, and the reliability of this tiny unbranded far eastern import is quite unknown, but then you pays yer money and takes yer choice. As has already been mentioned, it comes down to the application first, and the budget available to source equipment which best suits those requirements. Personally, for a home system I'd tend to identify the imaging requirements first, and the recording demands second, albeit a degree of compromise may well be required to achieve an acceptable balance.

Hey Basil, The camera has to do what it says "on the tin"; if it's not "fit for purpose" and you have been mislead either verbally or by advertised claims, you have a right to demand a refund. If they get funny about sorting your problem or refunding, you could always mention 'trading standards" and see what happens!

Hey Kay, we'd probably need to be equipped with magic wands to make any serious inroads with the majority of manufacturers. Not that many years ago, all the most entertaining manuals were written in Jenglish (japanese english), but know of course, a significant proportion of products are Taiwean, so the 'copy' is ever so slightly different. I've spent countless hours discussing with manufacturers both product design features and technical documentation, and the general response is lots of smiling, nodding, buckets of goodwill, but little if any tangible results. To be fair, if I spoke any of the far eastern languages a fraction as well as the highly knowledgable guys I meet who speak english, I'd be a seriously happy chappy. So I suppose it's easy to understand that whether grammatically correct (or technically accurate for that matter), the 'representatives' are genuinly proud of their colleagues linguistic achievements. I couldn't agree more about the absolute necessity to understand the inner workings of a product, to stand any chance at all of producing relevant and concise documentation. Maybe we should start another thread to see which manufacturers products are consistantly let down by the quality of the accompanying literature. Maybe that way the manufacturers could be ever so gently persuaded to take note. Oh and perhaps also a pat on the back for those that excel in this department. Any thoughts...?

Blimey!! ... and I used to think soldering BNC connectors was fun; look what I've been missing. Let's get a sense of proportion here. Dealers / installers have to make a living so it's not unreasonable for discussions concerning trade pricing to be held in a restricted forum. Having spent many years providing trade supply and tech support for installers mostly in the '80's, and having dealt with far more DiYers than I can ever remember, the only difference I could ever see, was one was trying to make money, whilst the other was trying to save money. For what it's worth, the knowledge and skills level was generally not that disimilar, with many inexperienced installers requiring a far greater level of technical support, simply because they were often over confident about their abilities. On the other hand, many DiYers were extremely enthusiastic to learn, because they wanted the job done right (and they found the whole subject of CCTV .... interesting). The whole point about experience and knowledge is that it's there to be shared, hence the benefit of an open forum like this. When I started out in the '70's, there was probably no more than a few dozen CCTV companies here in the U.K., and we made a point of exchanging information and advice to develop and promote a 'professional' approach. If more DiYers and end users had a greater level of knowledge, they wouldn't be ripped off by unscrupulous installers (yes they do exist ). In my opinion, the day we think we know it all, and are far too "professional" to pass on trade secrets (advice) and 'tricks of the trade' (practical experience) is the day I'll pack it in. ... and thank's for the comment kaysadeya; so should it be that all are equal in a public forum, and long may it continue. And BTW, thanks to all the guys on this forum who provide practical advice and assistance without question, particularly Rory, Thomas, CCTV Australia, Herm., and all the rest of you ... you know who you are! Rant over, I'm off for a cup of tea (very english )

BTW, if you try soldering the wire outside of the pin, you generally end up with large balls of solder rolling togethor, and shorting out the connections. If that does happen, you simply invert the plug and let gravity draw the solder back onto the iron (then just flick it away somewhere safe!)

If you can, yes! When you strip back a stranded conductor, if you need (for example) an 1/8th of an inch (or 3mm), strip back approx. 3 times as much, tightly twist the strands with your fingers, and then tin the conductors. When the solder has cooled, cut back the soldered wire to the exact length you need using a good quality sidecutter. That way, the wires are less likely to splay out when you are trying to insert them into the pins. Anybody would think I've done this before

As MrMcauber suggested no problem at all. CT 100 way outperforms RG 59B/U, but because of its physical size, it can sometimes be harder to get hold of suitable connectors. Also the double screening can be particularly useful in some situations where there is a risk of airborne interference, but in practice, for anything less than 50 metres, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the pictures apart.

I'm useless at throwing bones, but .... this technique works quite well if you only have two hands. If you can get hold of some very fine solder, insert it into the pin and very gently apply the iron to the edge of the pin until the solder melts. Don't overheat, otherwise you'll melt the connector!. Allow it to cool, then repeat with the other pins. Strip back the conductors and then lightly 'tin' the exposed wires with solder. Then whilst applying gentle heat to the pin, quickly push the tinned connector into the melting solder, and you should get a perfect connection (after the first twenty years practice it does get easier). If you can get hold of some thin sleeving, it's a good idea to use that to insulate each pin. BTW, very thin conductors are quite fiddly to handle, so I normally use some fine tweezers and hold the wire approx 3/4" or 20mm from the end, then the insulation won't get heat damaged when you're soldering.