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Thanks for the help guys. So this is what I got. ALC is selected and Super D3 is on. The level is set to between the 2nd and 3rd dot from the lowest. AGC is set to HIGH but that is really for the low light setting. My B/W mode is set to Auto1 - Level LOW DNR is set to default HIGH White Balance is AWC Thanks, Chuck

Yes AES is enabled. This view is not where the camera is going. This is just outside my office building. The customer will be setup similarly. They have landscaping material that they want to keep an eye on and their driveway is tarred so I am expecting glare. If it's sunny and they can't see there material what good is the camera system going to be for them you know.

Reviving and old thread....better than starting a new one I guess LOL! I have done a few aerials but I have been using standard Siamese cable used for indoors. Now the PVC jacket should last for probably longer than the hardware before breaking down. But.... Would you suggest Direct Burial cable for doing aerials? I have to do a run of about 75' and I will be running 2 x Siamese, 1 x 18/2, 1 x 22/4. This is for 2 cameras and an access control reader and I/O cables. Instead of buying 22AWG for I/O for one area I will just use the 18/2 I already got... Anyhow. DO you think standard cable will work or should I go Direct Burial. Something about UV exposure I'm not sure about. The electrician already cam in and put the guide wire and a riser pole specially for this project. Thanks

Amen to that So why pay huge premiums for some of these name brands with fancy features. These Pano's are huge premiums but I honestly in the end don't see the huge value there unless there was such a huge difference where you can say OH YA now that is a good camera but I guess I don't see that (as I initially thought there was). I do see differences in TVL ratings and some of the WDR assistance but to my eyes those are the biggest gains I see from cheap to expensive. I mean there are some other items I left out here but come on.

Well I'm in the wrong friggen business I'm not happy with any camera, low end to high end I honestly don't see a difference a lot of time. I've had everything in here from no name brand under $100 cameras to $400+ cameras and sometimes the picture look identical. This outdoor picture now although a bit better I'm still not happy with brightness. This camera was supposed to be the camera of all cameras when it comes to stuff like this and I just don't see the cost adder of almost $200 over the Arm when it comes to this brightness issue. I spoke way to soon in my earlier post saying "WOW" because at that particular moment the picture was definitely better on the Pano. I'm either slow in figuring out how to adjust the fine settings or there is just no way to get a better picture. I'm back to my original question that started this post. Isn't there a good all around camera out there? How do people adjust for brightness in parking lots when the sun is out? Do all surveillance systems look like this if so why the heck does anyone even install them gees!!! If I'm not happy how the heck to you make your customer happy with the picture? Now I'm frustrated LOL!!!! When all is said and done it's almost cheaper to hire an unemployed person a few bucks to sit there and watch a parking lot Am I way off? I mean do you all have these same issues to contend with or am I missing something? What do you tell your customers when they say this is to darn bright, I can't make out a person walking by but if it's cloudy out I see the people just fine. I stand up on a ladder and look down at the parking lot and those spots that the camera finds to be very bright just don't seem that bright to my eyes. I don't get it, isn't that what the auto-iris is for? I'd rather see the camera dim down a bit to make those bright spots a little more recognizable but I can't seem to find one that does that.

OK I'm back to bright. I grabbed a screen shot of the CP484 in todays morning sun. The sun is behind the building. I don't understand with a camera of this magnitude why I am still seeing this brightness in the driveway. I spoke to soon yesterday being all excited about the picture but this morning during the same time of day I took the CX550DN photo the CP484 also has this brightness problem. Am I missing something in the settings that could help this. I'm not familiar with the CP484 feature/functions like some of you. Thanks for any help.

I can't offer you any experience on the Samsung line. I know I tried Toshiba and Arm and was not happy with either of those. The Panasonic CP484 now there's a camera as I recently figured. I too was wondering about the Samsungs as they seem to be priced a little better. Not to thread jack and draw attention away from your original question but since you seem to have installed a few of the 484's do you find that the default factory settings are typically fine for you? Thx

I was posting to show the glare difference not the resolution differences. These pictures are screen shots taken from doing a print-screen so no matter how I do it they wouldn't look as good anyhow. But looking at the pictures you see the diffences in picture from one camera to the other which is what I was trying to do. Sorry I cannot do any better than this.

How much gap are we talking here? I have not seen shims specific for this sort of thing but it doesn't mean they don't exist. Does it have to be a dome? I'm not promoting anyone's site but I did find this ARM mount. Would something like this work. The dome would mount as if mounted to a ceiling. [edit by mod - store link removed]

All I can say is wow what a HUGE difference. The camera is always compensating for brightness differences, awesome but a crap load of menu items some of which are new to me for adjustments. I'm assuming defaults are typically OK? Before with the ARM with sun in the driveway: This is with the CP484 default settings with sun in the driveway and more shadows: This is an inside shot of the two cameras side by side. You can see the back of my head showing that the BLC works well on the ARM but everything else is pretty darn bright. Guess which is which?!? Both cameras are using a Fujinon D/N 2.7mm-13.5mm Lens. Hope this answers some questions. It is boxed strangly though inside an aircusion container insert instead of the typical boxed container insert or foam padding insert.

I find the sense up and slow shutter speed to be the deal breaker. I have installed a few of the CPH4000 cameras that CCTVImports sells. They are identical to the Speco Intensifier series cameras (I've mentioned that on here before someplace). It is a high res low light camera and does what it is supposed to do but not with side effects like ghosting under really low light settings. I will do as advertised though and not a terrible camera. I don't think IR will fall off the table though for the same reasons others mentions here. I think IR may come down in price a little though because of the competing low light cameras making the claims they do so I think if anything it may drive down some of the IR floods but what the heck do I know.

Ya it is pricey but I sucked it up to make that impression to the customer. When your a young business sometimes you gotta do that I guess. I'm not losing money but I am making less than I otherwise would have. So the latest camera I was disappointed in is the ARM CX550DN. I am using 2.7 - 13.5mm Fujinon D/N lenses on them and the focus shift was something that can not be ignored. I was on the phone with their tech support and they said this camera was more subjected to it but they blamed the CFL lights I have in the office as a possible problem, because it shouldn't be that bad. I moved the camera outside in a housing and stuck around the office until late at night to play around with it. I adjusted in the day so it was crystal clear then when night roled around and it switched to night mode everything went blurry. Not to the point where nothing could be made out but noticable. I re-adjusted it during the evening and it was back crystal clear again. Day time roled around and it was unclear and also had a picture that Smit9352 had posted. I gave up on that ARM camera for sure. I should be receiving the Pano's tomorrow so I am anxious to try them out. Customer better be happy with the effort I'm putting in here...LOL If those Panasonics are as good as they say I will be getting more in the furture. Don't mind paying for a camera that lives up to it's cost.

OK from what I am reading I am going to try the Panasonic CP-484. A little pricey but I read some good reviews. I just want one that works well all around.

I got a customer who has had a camera installed for sometime now. It is a vandal proof dome camera similar to that on CCTVImports website listed as 7500 or the 7600. This camera does not come from them as this customer was one of our first ones. Anyhow.....The camera appears to be fading in and out to complete darkness. I changed out the camera and I even changed out the power supply. The customer only has two cameras there so it was easy to swap out the 12V supply with a spare I had in stock. That did not fix the issue. Between camera changes I put a low light camera (non-IR) in its place and it ran for a couple months until I got back out to the customers and changed it to what they had initially. Well guess what the fading in and out is back. First thoughts are that the IR draw is maybe causing an issue but the distance to the powersupply is only about 75 feet or so and it is 12V DC. Could it be that the 500ma supply could be the issue? The original was a 500ma so the one I replaced it with was also a 500ma. I have a spare 1.5a supply here which is the only thing I have that is one step up from 500ma. The camera spec calls for 500ma. Thoughts anyone? At a loss and would like to try something new as it doesn't appear to be the camera itself. Thanks.

Not me, I use twist ons You serious?!? How does that work for you in high humid areas like, well, outdoors. We use nothing but compression connectors but this incident was one of those that got away. It worked and then didn't work etc....was expensive on fuel to figure that one out...doh!

Have you been out to the customers yet? Maybe try disconnecting one camera at a time to see if it may be just one defective camera emitting stray RFI. Could it be the PS? Are they dual voltage cam's, if so try using a 24VAC supply instead? I agree that it most likely is not the IR's causing it. Does he have any neighbors close by? Are they having garage door issues because of his camera system? Be thankful at least the garage door is not opening and closing on its own constantly

So I have a GV1240 Combo card that as you know costs a lot. I expected a kick a$$ card. But on the contrary it's horrible and I stress that unless someone can straighten it out. First in order to get a really decent live view you have to put the DSP overlay on. If this is the case then why make it an option and not make the best possible live view out of the box (no option). Ok so now my live view looks decent but the recorded video is absolutely horrid. Jagged edges on cars and ghosting of vehicles in motion...I mean it is bad. I called tech support and spoke to a gentleman name Allen. He asked me setup questions like record quality (set to the highest BTW) and is at 720x480 non-interlaced and using GEO MPEG4. He asked me to send him an avi so I did. He called me back and said there is nothing they could do. I stated that my low end DVR's record a 100% better than the GV1240 and he agreed (weird!). He stated the DSP Overlay does not transfer into the recorded video (WHAT?) so the recorded video will not look as good. SO I asked why did I pay top $$$ for a card expecting top quality when I get a better recording from a few hundred dollar embedded DVR. He said to contact my supplier and figure out if I can return it if I'm not happy. I did that and working it out. So I don't get it. Why is the recorded video so much worse than the live view. One would think that is should be great quality to give to the cops etc...Even my print view is bad showing massive jagged edges. I can attach pictures but it won't help the cause here. The RECORDED video is much worse than live. Also the recorded video looks better when viewing from Windows Media Player than through the Geovision video/audio log viewer which is BTW v8.2 of the software. I've been reading about some similar instances but is it really this bad? I would expect a PC based system with much more horsepower to have a much better quality video.

Sorry, haven't logged in for a few days. I got this working beautifully now. I'm really not sure what fixed it because I ended up formatting my drive, reloading XP and GV card and software. I had given up trying to figure it out so I decided to start over. Everything is working great now. I wish I had known why I was getting such bad results. I am planning on building another system shortly with this same card. I was looking into getting a different card but there is just so much support for GV that I will stick with it. Biggest issue I find is that it is not a very intuitive interface and to use all the features remotely you have to open up a crap load of different port numbers...would be nice to just have to remember one port but hey can't get everything I guess. Chuck

Well the last two responses hit the nail on the head I think. After all the things I had done to try and fix the issue for some ODD reason I never did look at the center core tip of my connector on the camera side . Well the darn tip was pushed right into the connector....................Well I feel like an idiot but let this be a lesson that sometimes the darn problem is not as hard as it might seem. Off course I tested continuity of the connectors to check for shorts but I had done it from the DVR end so I did not see the core tip on the camera side. The temporary camera I put in it's place was from a different manufacturer and they probably used a different connector on the camera so it made a good connection but the original camera did not. Since it was a small convenience store right on a busy road the vibration of passing trucks or the vibration from the cooler compressors were breaking the video connection. Then when the vibration reoccured the video would come back on. Well I hope this fixed the problem because I could not reproduce it while I was there even with the bad connector. Needless to say this was very frustrating and even more so if all it was was the darn commpression connector core tip. And the customer is an hour away so the time and fuel spent argh........ Hopefully the customer does not call back with the same issue I'll find out if after a few days the customer does not call back. Thanks for all the responses.

My practice is too keep the plywood on the grid. They are 4' long so they are the same width as all the ceiling tiles I dealt with. They basically would lay within the same track of the grid as the tile. I have found that if the plywood is the same width you will be able to tighten the camera down better with screws than if laying it directly on top of the grid where if you tighten too much you may cause the tile to lift off it's track. That's my practice anyhow. Not sure how anyone else is doing it. Good luck

Same concept for me. I buy a full sheet of 1/4" plywood and cut it into 4" strips so I have a number of 4" x 4' strips in my van at all the times. Never leave home without them With lighter domes toggle bolts work well also but since it appears you have heavier ones I would go with a wooden board as closedcircuitcom mentioned.

You know I hadn't really looked into them. Not sure about their pricing but I should look into them as they appear to have a nice product. Found this Youtube clip for Isonas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSed2K4BMuY Thanks

So I have been using the Fujinon D/N lenses on cameras which do not have True D/N functionality. I am changing over to true D/N cameras well because they are better My question is can these D/N lenses be used on a true D/N camera? Reading about the D/N Fujinon lens is that they allow more IR pass through and better for night camera view but a true Day/Night camera does this on it own so I'm wondering if I would just be making the camera worse off or because this lens is made for D/N this is the lens I should be using for true day night cameras? Any experience with these lenses on a true day night camera? Thanks.

Thanks CollinR. Would you consider the Fujinon D/N lenses quality? They appear to have some good lenses and they are priced right from what I've seen.

I totally forgot to get back to this post. I did meet with Hartmann Controls out in Toronto. The sales guy brought over a demo kit and we walked through the software to program it. I was not overly impressed with the system plus we left there with some action items he was supposed to get back to me about and I never heard from him. I was not going to chase them down for sure and they appear to be a very small company. Nope not going to go with them. I decided to lock in with Keri Systems. They got the new IP Access Control devices which are much more cost effective and IP is the way to go now a days. Being able to tie together multiple buildings all on one server is makes it much more manageable. Plus they have been very responsive to questions about the system I am currently estimating out.