Hik/Swann vs Dahua evening and focus comparisons

[MaxIcon 0]

OK, here's another set of Hik/Swann 1080p and Dahua HFW3300C comparisons. If I had the 3200S, that would be perfect for this, as they're the same form factor and price range, but the Swann is holding up quite well against the more expensive Dahua.

 

All these are at the default settings, 1080p, with the Dahua zoomed out to the same field of view as the Swann. Both are set for a 1/30 sec minimum exposure to prevent motion blur, as that's how most people will use them in real life. As I mentioned in another thread, the Swann lens appears to be a bit less than 3.3mm, not the 4mm it's listed as, and the Dahua's at 3.3mm.

 

I'll continue to use the Blue Iris split screens, which are great for comparing identical time snaps, as well as some Hik-only shots.

 

Overall, the Hik has more pleasing and detailed shots, but less night sensitivity. The settings can be tweaked to bring the images closer to each other, but for starters, I'm leaving them at the defaults. Also, the night shots have IR on for both cams, so IR performance isn't really a good comparison here, since both benefit from each other's IR, but the night sensitivity is a good comparison.

 

Also, gotta love that Hik adaptive overlay lettering. This is definitely the future on better cam firmware.

 

First, here's the overview shot - heading into dusk, but still a good bit of light out. The Dahua's a good bit brighter (which contributes to both night performance and its failure to switch to night mode in many situations), but the Hik is much more attractive. The Hik also doesn't suffer from the soft patches in the grass like the Dahua does, but shows some minor sharpening artifacts. Both the Hik and the Dahua will show the colors off into the purple end now and again.

 

Here's a Siemens focus star, 10' away from the cameras, zoomed in all the way in BI. The Dahua has slightly better focus or resolution, but the Hik is on factory focus, as it's a pain to get into it. You can see from the brighter halos around the Dahua star that it's more over-processed, and it's a lot less dark.

 

Switching to BW while there's still light out, but no IR on yet, shows that the Dahua lens has better IR correction. The star center focus is about the same on the Dahua as before, while the Hik loses some definition, though not much. The over-processing matters less in BW mode, and the Dahua's better night sensitivity makes the star brighter.

 

When it gets a little darker, the IR switches on on both cams, for this view. The Dahua's still brighter, but the Hik still looks better - crisper and cleaner.

 

Here's how the stars look zoomed in with the IR on. The Dahua's not looking so good against the Hik.

 

Now, it's pretty dark out. Again, the Dahua's got better sensitivity, and shows a lot more at the fringes - above the fence, and the IR splash on the building at the far right (from a Vivotek IP8332) is much brighter. However, the Dahua's a lot softer.

 

Here's a zoom on a darker area that shows the trade-off in night performance between the two pretty clearly. The Dahua's still brighter and shows more highlights, but is softer with sharpening artifacts from noise. The Hik is a lot sharper and more detailed. Which is better? It depends on your needs. The sharpening artifacts contribute a lot of apparent motion in the actual video.

 

Here's the same shot with a pair of 150W halogen motion detector lights on. Again, the Dahua looks good from the big picture perspective, but the Hik is a lot sharper and more detailed.

 

Now, there's also been some talk about the softness on the right side of the Hik, so I thought I'd grab a few shots of that as well. I did these over the weekend, and they helped me figure out how to get the shots I needed for the comparisons above.

 

Here's a focus star at the far left of the Hik field of view. I measured 10' out, then took the star to the edges of the field of view, so they're further than 10' at an angle. This is all in the daytime.

 

Same shot, but at the soft right edge - yuck! That looks like a lens element problem to me, but if that were the case, you'd expect different cams to show the problems in different areas, rather than all on the right side. Maybe the reason will be clear with more testing.

 

So, does the IR filter possibly have a problem along one edge? I switched it out, and tried again. Left side, not nearly as good as with the IR filter in.

 

Ugly right side with IR filter out - even worse!

 

How does this compare to the Dahua? Here's a shot of both in color mode. It was windy that day, so I have some bags of PVC fittings holding the star onto the stand so it won't blow down.

 

Switch to BW mode, and like the tests above, the Dahua's crisper and sharper in daylight, showing that the IR correction on the lens is better for the Dahua. It also demonstrates how the edges of a lens have worse resolution in general than the center, which is typical on inexpensive lenses.

[MaxIcon 0]

OK, updated to the local forum version!

 

I realized I should throw in the firmware versions, since this can affect results. You never know what changes in updates unless you have a comparison from before.

 

Dahua IPC-HFW3300C:

Software Version - 2.103.0001.0.R, build : 2012-09-14

WEB Version - 3.0.0.0

 

Hik/Swann:

Model - SWNHD-820CAM

Firmware Version - V4.0.9 130106

Encoding Version - V4.0 build 121228

 

Interestingly, the Swann's label says CONHD-A1080X4 (part of the 4 pack, maybe?), and the serial number on the label is completely different from the serial number the software reports. The Dahua is the same - it's got a K&D label, with model number KDW-HW47RC83, and a different SN than the firmware, but it's always had Dahua firmware.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Guest

[Q2U 0]

Great stuff Max! " title="Applause" />

[thewireguys 3]

Great work Max!!! " title="Applause" /> " title="Applause" />

 

We all should come up with a testing standard in which we can easily and repeatedly test cameras in multiple locations.

[Q2U 0]

Great work Max!!! " title="Applause" /> " title="Applause" />

 

We all should come up with a testing standard in which we can easily and repeatedly test cameras in multiple locations.

 

We already do! Ship the to MaxIcon for testing! " title="Applause" />

[thewireguys 3]

Great work Max!!! " title="Applause" /> " title="Applause" />

 

We all should come up with a testing standard in which we can easily and repeatedly test cameras in multiple locations.

 

We already do! Ship the to MaxIcon for testing! " title="Applause" />

 

No I mean something that Max, myself and other members can do. I have lots of cameras I could test if I had the time.

[Q2U 0]

I know. Simply another very poor joQe I'm afraid.

[daveshoot 0]

Does this forum have a Post of the Month award? Because I am nominating Maxi's test.

 

Thanks for the time you put into a very thorough and useful comparison.

[zikronix 0]

I have a couple of cams with the soft right side...i have been swapping them out with extras i bough from costco...

 

Is there a a really easy way that i can test these things in my house for the soft right side. Its hard to tel if they are soft when i look at them and they are pointed at the door!

[Q2U 0]

MaxIcon: is it possible to swap out the SWNHD-820CAM's lens and substitute a better lens...a lens which may possibly eliminate the "soft right edge" issue which so many seem to be concerned about? If yes, please provide a hyperlink to an appropriate replacement lens.

[MaxIcon 0]

So, this is part of what I'm trying to do here - come up with a repeatable way of testing that people can compare from different locations, using different cameras. I'll post the other tests here shortly, which use some more traditional techniques.

 

The Siemens star is a good tool for this. It's not easy to get an absolute measurement of camera quality, like TVL, but you can easily get a relative measurement like above. This is harder to do comparing different focal length lenses, but we should be able to work up some standards for this.

 

For testing the lens quality side to side, or the Swann side softness, the tests above work great. All you need is a decent quality printout of the Siemens star and a way to hold it up straight (three would be ideal, now that I think about it), then put them at the edges of the screen and compare how they look.

 

It doesn't even have to be the Siemens star, but any similar shape that will make it easy to tell when quality shifts. I always use the star for focusing, and it makes it really easy to tell when your focus is the best it can get. If you google siemens star, then click images, you'll see a huge assortment.

 

This one from Wikipedia is very good - high resolution, clean and sharp. It's a .png file, but most graphics programs, like Microsoft Paint, can handle that these days.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Siemens_star.svg/2000px-Siemens_star.svg.png

 

Print it to fit on a piece of paper (or three), mount them on cardboard or foamboard, and tape it to something like a big nail, a stake, whatever you can use to hold it upright, if you'll be using it outside. I use a folding stand for my tablet. For indoors, just tape it to whatever is in the right place.

 

Measure some distance straight out from the camera (I use 10'), mark it, then go in a straight line to each side and put the stars at the edge of your field of view. They should be about the same distance from the camera at this point. Alternately, for indoors testing, just tape up one star and move the camera so it's at one side or the other.

 

Take a snapshot at your highest resolution, zoom in on each star, and it'll be obvious if one side is different from the other, just like above. For even more info, put a 3rd star at the center spot, since that's where your lens quality is best. Good lenses won't degrade too much from the center, while cheap ones will be worse.

 

Next up is an attempt to figure out the true effective distance of a camera's IR, which is not an easy task. Again, hard numbers are hard to get, but relative numbers may be easy.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Guest

[zikronix 0]

So, this is part of what I'm trying to do here - come up with a repeatable way of testing that people can compare from different locations, using different cameras. I'll post the other tests here shortly, which use some more traditional techniques.

 

The Siemens star is a good tool for this. It's not easy to get an absolute measurement of camera quality, like TVL, but you can easily get a relative measurement like above. This is harder to do comparing different focal length lenses, but we should be able to work up some standards for this.

 

For testing the lens quality side to side, or the Swann side softness, the tests above work great. All you need is a decent quality printout of the Siemens star and a way to hold it up straight (three would be ideal, now that I think about it), then put them at the edges of the screen and compare how they look.

 

It doesn't even have to be the Siemens star, but any similar shape that will make it easy to tell when quality shifts. I always use the star for focusing, and it makes it really easy to tell when your focus is the best it can get. If you google siemens star, then click images, you'll see a huge assortment.

 

This one from Wikipedia is very good - high resolution, clean and sharp. It's a .png file, but most graphics programs, like Microsoft Paint, can handle that these days.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Siemens_star.svg/2000px-Siemens_star.svg.png

 

Print it to fit on a piece of paper (or three), mount them on cardboard or foamboard, and tape it to something like a big nail, a stake, whatever you can use to hold it upright. I use a folding stand for my tablet.

 

Measure some distance straight out from the camera (I use 10'), mark it, then go in a straight line to each side and put the stars at the edge of your field of view. They should be about the same distance from the camera at this point.

 

Take a snapshot at your highest resolution, zoom in on each star, and it'll be obvious if one side is different from the other, just like above. For even more info, put a 3rd star at the center spot, since that's where your lens quality is best. Good lenses won't degrade too much from the center, while cheap ones will be worse.

 

Next up is an attempt to figure out the true effective distance of a camera's IR, which is not an easy task. Again, hard numbers are hard to get, but relative numbers are easy.

 

 

so i guess ill be doing this in my house with all the spare cameras to see which ones exhibit the softness and which ones dont.

[Firefighter 0]

You're looking for some type of cut out cardboard you can place x amount of feet out past the camera....

 

 

I can't find the one I'm looking for.... But you get the idea. Like this right?

 

 

You can purchase test cards and stuff. Or make one and print it out...

 

http://www.vidilabs.com/ViDi%20Labs%20HD-SD%20Test%20chart%20v4.1%20description.jpg

[zikronix 0]

Yea...ill print one and stick the camera on my tripod and put it at the end of the hall.

[MaxIcon 0]

MaxIcon: is it possible to swap out the SWNHD-820CAM's lens and substitute a better lens...a lens which may possibly eliminate the "soft right edge" issue which so many seem to be concerned about? If yes, please provide a hyperlink to an appropriate replacement lens.

 

I haven't opened up the Hik yet, but will do that this weekend. I have a few spare lenses that will show if that's the issue. Even if it's not a better lens, it'll be different, which is all we need.

 

It's not really made to be opened easily, unlike the Dahua, but a challenge is always good!

[hardwired 0]

MaxIcon: is it possible to swap out the SWNHD-820CAM's lens and substitute a better lens...a lens which may possibly eliminate the "soft right edge" issue which so many seem to be concerned about? If yes, please provide a hyperlink to an appropriate replacement lens.

 

I haven't opened up the Hik yet, but will do that this weekend. I have a few spare lenses that will show if that's the issue. Even if it's not a better lens, it'll be different, which is all we need.

 

It's not really made to be opened easily, unlike the Dahua, but a challenge is always good!

On cameras I've found those kind of focus issues on, the problem has usually been misalignment between the imager and lens (warped / overtightened lens holder, etc.).

 

If the problem was with the lens itself, the problem wouldn't always be in the same place due to the lens being rotated to focus, which will be different in each camera.

 

Count me in as well, for finding some kind of standardized testing method that we can all use to exchange sample images with...

[MaxIcon 0]

You're looking for some type of cut out cardboard you can place x amount of feet out past the camera....

 

 

I can't find the one I'm looking for.... But you get the idea. Like this right?

 

 

You can purchase test cards and stuff. Or make one and print it out...

 

http://www.vidilabs.com/ViDi%20Labs%20HD-SD%20Test%20chart%20v4.1%20description.jpg

 

Yeah, this kind of thing is a good bet, and helps address the whole problem of "how good is my IR?". This is a tricky thing, since IR reflectivity isn't obvious until you put something in front of the camera. A printout of a face, for instance, may not show up nearly as well as a real face, while the BW face on the figure above will show more strongly than a real face.

 

I like the human size test figure - that covers a lot of bases at once. That would be a good thing to make in modular form so you could take it apart and store it without giving yourself a fright every time you walk in the garage!

[MaxIcon 0]

Here's the Swann with WDR set at 50, following up on a suggestion by Buellwinkle to equalize the night exposure more - definitely an improvement in the shadows, and much better than the Dahua in sharpness.

 

The Dahua WDR really isn't very good, and seems to be more of a contrast adjustment. The more I test the Swann, the less I like the Dahua. I guess I'll try to sell it to someone who doesn't read these boards!

 

As seen in the following post, I think the better Dahua night performance at the fringes is due to exposure times, rather than sensitivity.

 

Edited May 10, 2013 by Guest

[MaxIcon 0]

So, I started to get some night shots, and realized at the end that having the cameras so low was messing up the exposure, especially on the Hik, due to the bright IR on the ground in front of the cameras. I'll have to mount them up higher for meaningful results. I got some low-light color shots instead.

 

I now believe this is why the Dahua appears to have more sensitivity in the previous series - the Hik is speeding up the exposure above the minimum. The following shots show the Hik to be more sensitive overall.

 

Here's a good shot of the two cams in BW with IR on for both cams, so there's more than usual. The interesting part about this is the cat, who has a big shaved spot from a recent vet visit. The Hik shows a lot more detail here, as usual, which is pretty critical in night shots. The Dahua blurs the shaved border so it's almost unnoticeable.

 

OK, on to the color shots. Both cams are in color mode, with the IR filter in. The IR LEDs are still lit on the Dahua, since they aren't controlled by the processor, and are off on the Hik. This doesn't matter much, though a little usually gets through the IR filter. There's a card with some text on it for the IR testing, 20 feet away from the camera.

 

Some of the shots are at 1/30 second minimum exposure, which is as slow as you can go and avoid motion blur. You'll still get some blur for fast moving objects, but this is a popular tradeoff.

 

Others are at 1/6 second minimum exposure. This will blur someone walking at a normal speed, and will also limit your frame rate to 6 fps max by definition. This setting gives much better low light performance if you don't care about motion blur.

 

These shots have a light in the house on, spilling out the sliding glass door. There's not really much light there, but there were people working at a table, so I didn't turn it off for all the pics. These are 1/30 second minimum.

 

This shows the noise that the Hik develops in very low light, which shows up as horizontal lines as well as normal noise. The Hik is clearly much more sensitive at these settings than the Dahua, and the image is on the edge of being usable.

 

This is the same shot at 1/6 second exposure, making the light from the house look much brighter than it really is.

 

Here's a closeup of one section at 1/6 second exposure, showing some interesting differences - lots of imagery from the Hik, but with lots of noise and sharpening artifacts, while the Dahua loses all that shading, but you can almost read the paper where it says "144 Point".

 

Same shot, 1/30 second, but with the light in the house turned off, so there's no light at all. The Hik is still more sensitive, but neither has a usable image.

 

Same shot, all lights off, with minimum exposure at 1/6 second. Again, not very useful, but shows the superior Hik sensitivity.

 

Finally, here are the same shots with the 2 x 150W halogen motion lights on. Again, the Hik is more sensitive, leading me to believe that the earlier shots where the Dahua shows more in the background and fringes is due to the Hik changing exposure, rather than the Dahua being more sensitive.

 

Same shot, 1/6 second exposure. As expected, more detail and a better looking image from the Hik. I believe the Dahua has brighter exposure due to the Hik compensating for the bright lighting on the grass; that is, it's probably not at the 1/6 sec minimum, but this is hard to tell for sure.

 

Here's a closeup of the 1/6 second exposure. With decent lighting, the Hik shows more detail on the paper, while the Dahua shows more overall image, again due to longer exposure time.

 

So, hopefully over the weekend I'll get some meaningful IR shots, as that's really where it counts. Based on these results, I expect the Hik to outperform the Dahua, but we'll see.

[blake 0]

I'm really starting to like the Hikvision cameras over the dahua. I don't see these on their site though.

[MaxIcon 0]

Me too. Better firmware, better support, all around better cams for less money, it seems.

 

So, the Hik lens is glued into place, and I wasn't up to wrestling with it, so no lens swap tests. They really don't make it easy to get into this camera - it's not designed to be opened by the end user.