recommendations for capturing license plates

[int0 0]

Hello-

 

I have a chronic litterer dumping garbage at the end of my driveway, which is 1/4 mile from my house. I've set up a couple cameras and managed to catch them in the act, but only with IR video. I can't tell the color of the car or the license plate. With daylight, I can use my regular video camera to zoom in at plate level and capture the plates at high speed with 1/1000 shutter speed. But this camera does not have IR.

 

I have a Hikvision DS-2CD2142FWD-I, just a value series dome camera. I set this up on my mailbox, and it works great except of course it can not read license plates at night, even with high shutter speed (1/1000 or 1/2000).

 

Before I go and spend over $1000 on a dedicated LPR camera, I was hoping I could get a few recommendations for a camera similar to this Hikvision that allows me to zoom (optical) in on the license plate area. Maybe that would allow me to capture the plates at night.

 

I do not have any cabling between the house and the location at this time, so the camera would also need to have the option to record directly to SD card. I have a batter for power.

 

If anyone has any suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated. Also, I am looking for LPR camera system suggestions if this won't work. I can mount the camera on my mailbox, but I need to capture a car moving at 55 MPH during the night.

 

Thanks!