HFW3200S or DS-2CD2032-I

[hre1 0]

i spend the whole weekend for researching the HFW3200S and DS-2CD2032-I. i read the reviews in networkcameracritic for the corresponding models (SWANN 820HD and HFW3200C), searched in forums like cam-it, cctvforum etc. and tried to compare the footage that i found for both cameras. but at this point my mind tends to a buffer overflow error.

 

i can get the DS-2CD2032-I for 130$ and the HFW3200S for 155$. despite the lack of dahua support, what is the better choice for the best picture quality in day and infrared conditions? can someone please enlighten my brain...(especially mr. buellwinkle or MaxIcon)?

[buellwinkle 0]

Haha, tough choices out there with everyone upping their game. I'm actually looking at buying the very same Hikvision but with a 12mm lens to replace a Q-See 1.3mp bullet but mostly because I want the 12mm lens and because one feature I can't stand on Dahua is the IR illuminators can not be turned off, even if put the camera in day mode. We have a condo where we want to use the camera and need to have it indoors looking out and I need to turn off the IR or it will bounce back in the window. But that's my one case.

 

I have a Dahua 1080P camera in my backyard, been there about a year and had the Swann 1080P and image quality is comparable and would be nit picking to say once stands out dramatically over the other. The issue I have with Dahua image quality is it relies heavily on strong noise reduction and that's what gives them a nice clean image at night BUT during the day, it takes fine detail like blades of grass and processes it like noise and there's no way to turn that off. At night, because you can tweak the noise reduction settings on the Hikvision, you can lower this so that it's a trade off between a pretty picture or one with slight noise but higher detail. Again, more tuning knobs on Hikvision, for example, I can set a max auto exposure to say 1/30th, the Dahua not.

 

Then there's WDR, this is a clear win for Hikvision, but Dahua's latest firmware provides WDR, not sure if it's as good as Hikvision though.

 

Another quirk, and doesn't exist on the Dahua 1080P camera I have because it's the large bullet and not sure the HFW3200S has it but the similar looking HFW2100 does is the wide hood over the front of the lens reflects IR back into the camera and creates sort of a halo. People here have painted it black with a sharpie but Hikvision saw the problem and coats that hood in black so not an issue.

 

Then you have 3MP + 1080P vs. only 1080P. This depends on your situation but I, like other suburbanites, live on a smaller lot, 100x60. So I prefer my cameras to have a 4:3 aspect ratio that 3MP delivers and not this wide panoramic view of 1080P. It's not even the extra pixels I care about as much as the aspect ratio. With Dahua, it's 1080P or less, with the Hikvision, it's 1080P or 3MP. Since my backyard is shallow and wide the 1080P makes sense, but in my driveway that's that's deeper than wider the 3MP makes sense, so it's a matter of choice.

 

PM me where you are getting the cameras. I want to see if they can get me the Hikvision with the 12mm lens that's in their spec sheet.

[JoeyJoey 0]

This site says to specify the lens size when ordering.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/DS-2CD2032-I-Hikvision-camera-Network-IP-camera-w-IR-and-IP66-HD-IP-Camera-3MP/904067_814476650.html

[MaxIcon 0]

I see one main functional problem with each camera at this point:

 

- The Dahua has the softness in the low light areas, as Buellwinkle points out. This isn't awful, but it's annoying. With luck, they'll fix it in a future release.

 

- The Hik/Swann gets noisier in low light, with the horizontal lines of noise you can see on some of the screen shots and clips. I didn't notice this at first because I was testing several cameras together, and the dual IR helped it with better exposure.

 

The Hik's a good bit noisier in the same conditions as the Dahua. I limit all my cams to 1/30s minimum exposure to avoid motion blur, so if you don't mind a longer exposure, the Swann image gets better. Likewise, if there's a bit of ambient light or additional IR, it cleans up. Turning on the WDR helps a lot in the daytime shadows, but makes the noise worse at night, and there's no way to enable it on a schedule.

 

The Hik's lens is hard to change because it's glued in, but people have removed the glue (I haven't tried it). I don't know if the Dahua's lens is or not. That only matters if you want to change it from what you ordered it with.

 

As BW mentioned, he Dahua's IR can't be turned off and is only controlled by the photo sensor regardless of mode, but on the bigger bullets, it can be unplugged and it doesn't care. The Hik's IR and mode/filter are controlled by the photo sensor, so presumably it can't be turned off, but doesn't need to be. On the Hik, if you leave it in night mode during the daytime, it turns the IR LEDs off when the light is bright.

 

Both have features in the firmware that sound nice and don't work as well as you'd like them to - this is typical in this price range. Hik's support is far better, but if you get the Dahua from someone who can provide the firmware, that helps. Overall, the Hik's software is more mature and stable, but that can change with any given release.

 

If I were to buy one today, I'd probably go for the Dahua, even though I like the Hik better overall, because of the low light noise. If that were equal, I'd choose the Hik, hands down.

[buellwinkle 0]

Maxi, how do you limit Dahua to 1/30th of a second max auto exposure? You probably have newer firmware but this is not an option on any of my Dahua cameras. So it could be lower noise but giving you longer exposure than you think.

[MaxIcon 0]

On both my 2100 and 3300 bullets, the way to have a minimum exposure and variable exposure setting is to select either Low Noise or Low Motion Blur, and set the range from 0 to 17 ms (for 1/60 sec) or 33 ms (for 1/30 sec).

 

Both low noise and low motion blur come up with the same default numbers, and neither remembers the settings, so I don't know why they have 2 entries. I think it's been like this on all the firmware versions, but my memory gets fuzzy after a while.