What happens to picture under ir when motion lights come on?

[blake 0]

If your viewing your cams at night that have built in ir lights on,what happens to the picture quality if your motion lights come on in that area?Does the camera adjust immediately so that you don't lose picture quality?Is this where the IR Cut Filter plays a very important part? I ask because all of my motion lights are dual halogen that really light up the area they are covering.

[thewireguys 3]

if there is enough light to switch the camera from BW/Color it could take up to a second for the camera to adjust. This really isn't that big of a deal but the big problem would be if the flood lights would blind the camera. You would want the lights aimed in the same direction as the cameras (mount the light above or below the camera not right next to it because of bugs) but you would not want camera to see the light housing(in the FOV) because it will blind the camera

[blake 0]

My camera layout puts the cameras viewing from behind the lights looking the same way about 10' away from each other.

[blake 0]

This is what i mean.Green is my lighting,brown is where i'm thinking of positioning my cameras in the front of the house.All cameras have varifocal lenses.The green light in the middle is a patio fixture with a standard bulb where as the others are halogen.The driveway light is motion triggered.The other two i have set on a dusk/dawn photocell so they stay on all night.

Edited September 21, 2009 by Guest

[thewireguys 3]

This is what i mean.Green is my lighting,brown is where i'm thinking of positioning my cameras in the front of the house.All cameras have varifocal lenses.

 

That should be fine..... just don't have the lights in the FOV and you will be fine

[zmxtech 0]

yes I have a boggle with the Sanyo IR cut filter cams the delay when lights come on is too slow allowing complete white out then 2 seconds of delay !

 

.... while the bad guy has walked past !

[blake 0]

Man that sucks.I think this is where a true day/night camera works better than a camera with ir.I got a demo of the new USAG true day/night midnight anti-vandal cam.That thing was amazing.For the money that thing is sweet..

[Kiwi 0]

I have a similar setup and also need it to work the moment the halogens switch on. I've been having a bit of trouble as the lenses are long focal lengths and we don't have any high quality off the shelf hardware to experiment with in this dire corner of the earth.

 

My true day/night camera takes only a half a second to handle the burst of light but 30 seconds to switch to daytime mode. I have enough light in either mode once the halogens are on BUT in night mode there is considerable IR focus shift unless I use an IR-compensated lens. That causes faces to be badly blurred.

 

In day mode the IR filter in the camera narrows the spectrum which lessens the focus shift with a standard lens.

 

The optimum setup in OP's case (since the FOV's are wide) is likely to use high-quality IR-comped lenses (e.g. Tamron) with a wide dynamic range color camera. A day/night may not be needed.

 

I have some images but they won't upload for some reason.

 

Oh, another comment on OP's setup. You need to do two things to get police attention: ID the intruder and then record his actions. The first requires a tight shot of the person with the best possible lighting, preferably at a "choke" point in the scene where the person would be most likely to pass through as they approach. The second is normally a wide shot of the building face to record the persons actions, tied to the ID video with the timestamp.

Your wide angle lenses facing outwards are not going to do either.

[blake 0]

That would be an interesting test to see.A day/night camera with and without ir under normal conditions at night,then have a motion light come on too see how the camera handles the changes.Out of my eight camera setup,i think i'm gonna use two true day/night cameras.One on the driveway catching people walking up the driveway to the front door,and one on the back patio covering my patio/sliding glass doors.The driveway has dual halogen motion light,and the patio has a single outdoor fixture that comes on via a photocell.

[Kiwi 0]

Perhaps I wasn't clear - you don't an "IR" light source either separate or built-in to a camera. The halogens produce significant IR themselves in addition to visible light.