Dark hallway /bright sconce lighting - dome recommendations?

[poker_fish 0]

I have a small rooming house (like a motel) that we want to monitor the halls in. The halls are about 90 feet long and 4 feet wide with a 10 foot tall ceiling. Camera positions at one-third and two-thirds down the hall pointed down and towards each other.

 

The lighting is what poses the biggest problem. The only source of light comes from bright sconces mounted on the walls. I mounted two high resolution dome cameras and have enclosed two sample screenshots. I’ve played with all the brightness settings on my DVR (Geovision 1480) and those images are the best we can get. You can see that the light sconces really come out overly bright.

 

I have two other hallways (in the same building) with the same parameters and lighting, and thought I’d ask a camera recommendation before I ordered and installed any more cameras in these halls.

 

A few things to note:

 

When the clear dome enclosure is off, the image is a lot better. Could there be glare coming off that enclosure. We’d prefer dome, but is that the way to go here?

 

Both cameras are zoomed in about 7x – this allows us to see the ends of the halls and not have much overlap between the two cameras.

 

We never used/tested a camera with Wide Dynamic Range, is this an application for that?

 

 

Our goal is to see monitor traffic of our rooms and to be able to see who is coming out of what room. We are able to do this with the current dome cameras, but would like to see if there is a way to get a better image with that dark hallway and extremely bright light sources.

 

All input is greatly appreciated!

[survtech 0]

Yes, WDR cameras could improve that picture. You might also try a camera with an "eclipse" function that would black out the bright areas.

 

Probably at least part of that is caused by reflections on the dome. The problem with eliminating the dome is that would subject the cameras to possible tampering. You might try another enclosure type (wedge, corner, etc.) that has a flat window. It should be less affected by glare.