Lux question

[zulu999 0]

Hello - Apologies for the newbie post to this forum, hopefully you guys will be able to help me in some way..

 

I'm looking to purchase a new external camera for the front of our youth drop-in centre. Ideally I don't want to go for open face IR vandal domes as they just bounce the light off the people too much and are therefore useless in capturing detail.

 

Our price range is rather domestic line as we are a charity, so unfortunately no nice Bosch Flexidomes... I was looking at a PTZ to allow us to cover multiple angles and found these two: http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/swann-700-tvl-pan-tilt-zoom-wired-outdoor-dome-camera-n51kq and http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/swann-420-tvl-pan-tilt-zoom-wired-outdoor-dome-camera-n37qj

 

One is supposedly 700TVL and the other 420... I'm happy to go with the 420 as you have the functionality of the zoom.

 

My mind was nearly made up, however I saw that the 420TVL has a min. illumination of 0.5lux whilst the 700TVL 0.01lux.

 

So - in our situation, on a street corner with street lighting nearby (but not directly lighting the area). Would the 0.5lux be acceptable?

 

I suppose the other option would be to keep one of the IR domes outside along with the PTZ to offer some additional lighting?

 

I've attached a couple of images from an open faced IR Vandal Dome outside at present - one when we're open and light spills out on to the area and one when we're shut which is considerably darker - if that's any use when trying to work out whether the lux ratings are acceptable.

[qrcctv 0]

I have been installing cameras or nearly 7 years now.

 

Definitely go for 700TVL 0.01lux!!! (0.01 Lux is much better than 0.5 Lux.)

 

There is no point of zooming on a low resolution image.