Scene black in shadows

[Mavrik 0]

I have a cam pointed outdoors and no matter what I adjust, any kind of shadow turns solid black (like it's being painted black), even with a light colored objects in direct sunlight have black in shadow areas. What causes things to turn black? I need to see into shadowed areas.

IQeye701, 1/2" rainbow 6mm lens.

[Soundy 1]

What are your exposure settings?

[Mavrik 0]

Exposure is on auto, what should it be on? I just found a "darkdetect" setting and I can now see in shadow areas, but bright areas are washed out.

[Soundy 1]

Beside each section header (like "Gain Settings") you should see a little green question mark - clicking that will give you a lot of details on that setting. In this case, you may want to use the "exposure windows" feature:

 

Use the Exposure Settings Page to set the part of the image used for automatic exposure (gain) calculations.

 

You can select a rectangular region of interest for which brightness and color balance will be best.

 

This is useful if parts of your image are excessively bright or dark, for example, if your image contains large amounts of sky or sunlit windows. Setting an exposure window may darken or brighten other areas of your image.

 

For best color balance, use an exposure window containing at least 20,000 pixels (e.g. 200 by 100), and attempt to include some gray or white areas.

 

This page shows the current exposure window by drawing it in blue.

 

In addition to setting the exposure window, you may wish to set the gain style algorithm from the Image Settings Page .

 

You might also try reducing the Contrast level, which defines the range between darkest and lightest areas, and then adjust the Brightness to compensate.

[Mavrik 0]

Using an exposure window for sampling to see certain areas would mean I need to constantly change settings in order to look around, this sounds very inconvenient. I didn't have these conserns with my analog cameras, set once and good to go, day or night. Even my IP webcam handles exposures better than this 701. In the world of real IP cams, constant adjustments is what I have to look forward too?

 

I do appreciate your help, I'm just getting a little frustrated that is isn't more plug and play.

[Soundy 1]

Using an exposure window for sampling to see certain areas would mean I need to constantly change settings in order to look around, this sounds very inconvenient.

Well without knowing how you're using the camera, I can only offer very generalized suggestions of what to try. Some instances, the exposure window is extremely handy and is a significant advantage over most other cameras that don't have it. Sometimes it's not.

 

I didn't have these conserns with my analog cameras, set once and good to go, day or night. Even my IP webcam handles exposures better than this 701. In the world of real IP cams, constant adjustments is what I have to look forward too?

It's nothing to do with it being an IP camera, it's how a particular camera handles contrast. Again, try changing the contrast settings.

 

For that matter, since it's a used camera, try resetting everything to default, as the previous user may have dialed things beyond normal for a specific purpose.

 

I do appreciate your help, I'm just getting a little frustrated that is isn't more plug and play.

I think the problem is that it's a far more FLEXIBLE camera than you're used to.

[Mavrik 0]

It's being used for outdoor scenes that have constant shade and direct sun.

 

First thing I tried was the contrast and brightness, then messed with shutter speeds and other settings.

 

The cam has been set to factory defaults, I've been adjusting from there.

 

Flexible? But I can't seem to tune it look at one scene all at once with shadows and direct lighting.

[Mavrik 0]

I tried all your suggestions, also played with the lens iris with different settings. I placed an exposure window only in the shaded area and it didn't make any difference. Right now I can't see in a shaded area at all, totally black, different scene and time of day than before. Scenes are going to constantly change because this is going on a pan/tilt. I had a Monalisa cam in the same scene and it looks fine. I'm starting to get discouraged with the real IP camera world. Suggestions?

[Soundy 1]

If the exposure window isn't affecting anything, it's sounding more like a defective camera. This is what it should do:

 

 

 

 

 

Contrast/brightness should give you a LOT of room for adjusting to bright/dark areas... it's nice and sunny here today so this should be a good example:

 

Defaults:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's NOTHING TO DO with it being a "real IP camera" - everything you're describing is related to the imager and/or image processing.

[Mavrik 0]

I'm sure this is all operator error, but this operator is just getting frustrated. There is a difference with the exposure window now, looks like bad positioning on my part. Your grass area in the far bottom right is more what my scene looks like. My scene is all soil. See if you can adjust to be able to see that part of your yard.

 

Thank you for taking all the time for the screen shots, that's allot of work.

[Soundy 1]

Little more like this?

 

 

 

Like I said, if the various settings aren't doing anything, there's a chance you got a faulty camera.

[SEANHAWG 1]

cool feature

[Mavrik 0]

Now that I could live with, I can even see a drain cover and the rest of the scene is not washed out (what I was getting). I'll have to wait for some afternoon shade for my test area to resume adjusting. I don't have the baluns to put it in the working location yet (did have it running analog there, but too much of a pain to adjust settings) and I don't really want to move my desktop computer outside

[Soundy 1]

cool feature

The IQs are really nice cameras - little more on the spendy side, but VERY powerful to configure. You can set motion zones and have the camera automatically FTP and/or email stills based on motion, or on a schedule. You can control a lot of options right from the URL, command-line style, as well as scheduling them via a CRON script you can upload to the camera (on my license plate cam, for example, I have it set to auto-shutter during the day, then at night it switches to a fixed shutter speed and adjusted exposure settings). There's a full TELNET interface to the settings as well... and as mentioned elsewhere, while they default to an ActiveX control for their interface, if that fails (different browser, non-Windows, etc.), it switches to a Java applet.

[Mavrik 0]

I was able to get the scene look like yours, however objects are still 'painted black' in direct sun or shadows. Solid light objects turn black in shadowed areas on objects, direct sun or in shadows. Even setting an exposure window in a shadowed area, objects turn black, out of shadows are totally washed out. My scene FOV is approx 15x15'.

 

What would tell the camera that a slightly dark area is black?

[Soundy 1]

It sounds like something's not right with this camera. Have you maybe checked for a firmware update?

[Mavrik 0]

I updated the firmware and it looks a little worse.