ACTi ACM-7411 anyone with night shots?

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Wondering if anyone has any evening (sun setting) shots and/or shots with street lighting using the ACM-7411 camera.

 

Only demo I seem to find on ACTi's site are under good lighting of course so I would like to see how they work in low lighting like street lamps or lit driveways.

 

Thanks.

[thewireguys 3]

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Thanks thewireguys. Yes I do recall seeing this image. Overall are you happy with the night time performace with street lighting?

 

I would have these on a building that has the amber street lighting in the parking lot and at the entrance. I think it will have more lighting than what you have here.

[zmxtech 0]

thanks dude.....

 

They are still very expensive, It would have to perform well under IR if I was to use them.

I have a ACM3401 Dome in testing and it's not to bad during the day but night its poor. The sensor is very noisy, a little bit of fine tuning there and it would be a winner.

 

z

[3RDIGLBL 0]

How does the 7411 perform under IR?

[thewireguys 3]

thanks dude.....

 

They are still very expensive, It would have to perform well under IR if I was to use them.

I have a ACM3401 Dome in testing and it's not to bad during the day but night its poor. The sensor is very noisy, a little bit of fine tuning there and it would be a winner.

 

z

 

The ACM3401 does not have a mechanical cut off filter..... That is why it is not good in the dark.

 

I think the 4711 is priced well

Edited October 28, 2009 by Guest

[thewireguys 3]

How does the 7411 perform under IR?

 

I don't know I have not tried it but from what I am told it is the same guts as the Acti 1231. My major complaint with the 4711 and all ACTI cameras is the window based motion detection it takes time to get it setup correctly for day/night setups

[3RDIGLBL 0]

I think the 4711 is priced

 

What do you mean here?

[thewireguys 3]

I think the 4711 is priced

 

What do you mean here?

 

Priced well

[zmxtech 0]

maybe I was too kind I know it does not have a cut filter, but complete blackness is a crap, Even with some 100w Halogen spotlights its poor !

[hardwired 0]

Actually, the 7411 does have a cutfilter... here are some day, dusk, night samples. I've been pretty happy with them, overall.

 

[3RDIGLBL 0]

WOW! These are great example pictures. Thanks so very much hardwired. I just ordered 14 of the ACM-7411 today with wall brackets. I feel a little better now that I've seen pictures.

 

Customer has street lights all over the place but the lights of course create lots of shadows and dark areas. It will be a bit of a challenge to do this one but these cameras appear to work fine for the price.

 

THANKS AGAIN!

[rory 0]

Looks like it is terrible for night. Those night shots look just like color minus the chroma, least it works with light though. I like the second to last picture, can i get that in all of them please, thanks

[zmxtech 0]

Please read the previous emails people before commenting.

 

Yes I know the 3401 has no cut filter "that why its poor..." I said

 

Those night shots [7411] look good -must have some serious flood lights ! ?

 

can it pick out a face or license plate as they go by ??

[3RDIGLBL 0]

Please read the previous emails people before commenting.

 

Yes I know the 3401 has no cut filter "that why its poor..." I said

 

Those night shots [7411] look good -must have some serious flood lights ! ?

 

can it pick out a face or license plate as they go by ??

 

zmxtech, I believe rory is commenting about the latest 7411 pictures that hardwired posted not about the 3401. rory is saying that he likes the picture before last which is a great shot but not a night time shot.

 

I agree rory but to go from a 7411 to a 3130 caliber camera is a huge $$ jump considering the quantity of cameras. The customer was not interested in spending that much so I tried to set his expectations as much as I good with going to these cameras. When all is said and done this customer may need as many as 74 cameras so take 74 multiplied by x hundreds of dollars more for a the best night IP camera and it was big money.

 

hardwired the shots you provided are using the flood lights or street lamps that the customer has right? There is no IR installed there is there?

[zmxtech 0]

yes the jump is way to $big$ on a 7411 being triple the price. I have been holding off buying them due to this night problem.

 

looks like multiple shadows in that last night shot, and there quite long so the lights must be close and low also ?

 

In these pic's the shutter speed must the real slow, like \25 lets see a car drive past and catch the plate or a person try to sneak past.

 

I get the feeling that Acti is on the verge of adding better night capability to there cameras... they just need to fix sensor noise and more cut filters.

Would not hurt to throw in a built in illuminator in there.

 

I think anyone can build an IP camera for the day but night sorts em out...

[Sawbones 0]

I'm going to post a bunch of pictures here, gentlemen... and I hope you're going to tell me I've done something wrong, because the 7411 I'm testing has very weak night performance.

 

Not "marginal"... I'm talking about genuinely disappointing.

 

Here's the daytime scene, with a license plate as the point-of-interest (about 50 feet away, and partially blacked-out). The first picture is with the view pulled all the way back with the included lens. The second is zoomed in on the same scene, again using the integrated lens. All pictures were taken with shutter speed on "normal" instead of "slowest" (I'm not interested in Speco Intensifier-esque blurry pictures).

 

 

 

 

Here are the night-shots, including the IR illuminators used to generate them. These were taken last night... the moon was also practically full.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gentlemen, somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong here,... because unless I"m doing something wrong, the IR sensitivity of this camera is truly dismal. These are all near-IR illuminators (not 940nm)That last illuminator in particular is a 60W military-grade IR emitter that pulls 5A at 13.3V off a dedicated power supply. It turns night into day for virtually any day/night camera... except, apparently, this Acti model.

 

Somebody put me some knowledge in here.

[ronster 0]

It says it has mechanical ir cut filter. Shouldnt it look better?

[Sawbones 0]

It says it has mechanical ir cut filter. Shouldnt it look better?

 

My feeling exactly.

 

Perhaps I'm spoiled, since most of the day/night cameras I've installed were the Panasonic domes (484S series)... but I frankly expected much better pictures.

 

I'm probably going to go out there another night and see if they look equally bad... something's got to be wrong, but I don't know what it is. The camera is brand-new, so I can't imagine it's got a bad ICR (and the images I did get are in B&W)

[rory 0]

Looks like the Iris is closed too much.

 

Also check power and the lens.

[zmxtech 0]

I dont think they have a manual Iris ?

 

Anyway looks like the camera has switched to night mode but the cut filter is still there. it has not moved -you should be able to hear it move ?

 

The First two illuminators are Ebay toys 1st one might do 10m the other a wide angle for ceilings etc the other "military" should produce a nice crisp BW picture.

 

 

z

[hardwired 0]

Try refocusing at night, under IR. It looks like you have enough focus shift at night to make it fairly fuzzy, and with the iris fully open, it's more critical. The image during the day will have the iris closed down enough that (hopefully) it will not be a problem.

 

Also, my images were with some frame integration... But not anywhere the slowest, motion blur doesn't seem to be a problem there. I'm not a big fan of slow shutter, but in a lot of instances, 1/15th (2 frames) or so isn't a big problem.

[Sawbones 0]

I'm pretty sure that Acti cam is auto-iris.

 

I'm going to try it again... I ran it today from several different PoE sources, and it behaved appropriately.

 

I have tried running it today in a completely dark room, and it sees very well with IR. We must have had an ICR malfunction last evening. It's one thing to have a bad picture in a non-IR-reflective environment (vegetation, for instance, doesn't tend to reflect IR very well)... quite another to get no picture in an area that's absolutely saturated with illumination of the appropriate wavelength.

 

That military IR emitter should have been the tip-off... it's powerful enough when energized, that it's not even eye-safe within about five feet of the radiating surface.

 

When I get more pictures, I'll post them.

[megapixel man 0]

Try refocusing at night, under IR. It looks like you have enough focus shift at night to make it fairly fuzzy, and with the iris fully open, it's more critical. The image during the day will have the iris closed down enough that (hopefully) it will not be a problem.

 

Also, my images were with some frame integration... But not anywhere the slowest, motion blur doesn't seem to be a problem there. I'm not a big fan of slow shutter, but in a lot of instances, 1/15th (2 frames) or so isn't a big problem.

 

True, is the lens your using IR corrected?

[Sawbones 0]

Try refocusing at night, under IR. It looks like you have enough focus shift at night to make it fairly fuzzy, and with the iris fully open, it's more critical. The image during the day will have the iris closed down enough that (hopefully) it will not be a problem.

 

Also, my images were with some frame integration... But not anywhere the slowest, motion blur doesn't seem to be a problem there. I'm not a big fan of slow shutter, but in a lot of instances, 1/15th (2 frames) or so isn't a big problem.

 

True, is the lens your using IR corrected?

 

Good question... I'll have to check the spec sheet. It's an integrated lens, so there's no changing it out, unless one of you knows a trick.

 

************** Edit ****************

 

It doesn't say if it's an IR corrected lens.