Camera Comparison

[unplugged 0]

Noob here.

Just starting into the the CCTV.

 

My sister has always been a big fan of CCTV so based on her advice I installed my first camera.

 

A Acti ACM 1231 1.3 MB Bullet Camera. One week after I installed the camera my car was "broken" into in my driveway. "Broken" is a bit a of a misnomer as the car was probably unlocked. He took a bag with some sailing gear - no big deal. Left a 5" knife on my seat which kinda freaked me out a bit. Picture from camera was semi useful. The lighting I had in the driveway was HID so it took 60 secs to warm up and the perp was gone in under 60 secs. So all I had was a shot of someone in a hoodie.

 

I replaced the light with an LED which now comes on within 2 secs so no more delay. My sis said I needed more resolution so I went and purchased a Arecont 5 MB dome camera (AV5155). Whereas the ACTI had a varivocal lens the Arecont is manual Focus.

 

So I install the Arecont dome and the default lens is too narrow. 4.5 -10.0mm. So I retrofitted a MPL33-12 which is 3.3-12mm. So field of view is now acceptable. The picture is however worse then the Acti camera it was to replace. The Acti is 1.3 and the Arecont is 5Mb. I assumed this would mean the camera would provide more resolution.

 

I am finding the picture quality of the Arecont 5Mb camera to be significantly less then the Acti. The Acti wa approx. $350 and the Arecont $900+ so I am unsure what to do next.

 

Is is the different form factor (dome vs bullet) or does Arecont just make a crab camera?

[Soundy 1]

I'll set aside my usual Arecont rant here and suggest that the problem is likely the lens itself - the lenses included with both cameras are designed for use on megapixel cameras (that is, they're built to higher optical quality and have higher resolving power), whereas I suspect the one you swapped in for the Arecont isn't.

 

Something else to keep in mind is that the higher the resolution, *in general*, the poorer the low-light performance of a camera. Think of the sensor pixels as buckets and light photos as raindrops - the larger the bucket, the more water you can collect; similarly, the larger the pixel, the more light you can collect. Of course, there's more to it than that, including the processing done in-camera, the iris opening of the lens (how much light it passes), and so forth...

 

Without some pictures or video clips from the two cameras, it's hard to say beyond that exactly where the problem is, because "picture quality" means different things to different people.