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Issue With Camera Night Vision in my narrow side alley - IR is reflecting from the walls

Woodyz82

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Hi All,

Newbie here so go easy! Just completed my first home CCTV installation, Hikvision DS7608NI-K2/8P and x4 2CD2385G1-I

Cracking bit of kit, minor problem I am having with one camera is down the narrow side of the house the night vision function is poor, I have attached a few photos. Believe the camera was too close to the wall and maybe the light was bouncing back, I moved the camera angle and it was much better but still poor, almost like it hasn’t the depth.

I believe the camera and wiring are fine, could it just be it’s such a dark narrow area? Is light reflecting? Any settings I can mess around with?

Also attached a day image and one of the front at night to show how I expected them all to be.

Thanks in advance.
 

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Hi @Woodyz82

You will need to adjust some of the image settings to improve the result you are getting.

The best setting to try would probably be the Smart Supplement Light setting which as you can see from the below screenshot will let you set the cameras IR LEDs to manually or automatically adjust the distance they need to cover. (We would start with auto and if that doesn't get it right on its own then you can try adjusting it manually)

Screenshot 2020-07-09 at 13.02.00.png


By default the IR LEDs just shoot for the full 30m range they offer and so that would be why you are seeing it overexpose both the wall the camera is mounted to and the wall across the alleyway from the camera.
 
Hi Dan

Thank you for the reply, that’s good to hear. I moved the camera angle last night but it was worse. So will put it back to where it was and then do as suggested. Spent a few hours on the forum last night reading through everything. I am still accessing the cameras via the NVR, not setup the network as yet.

Plan to update the NVR firmware, then setup the network, then believe I can then log in via web browser or the IVMS software to the camera IP address and this opens up much more options.

Will try that and report back!


Should I be able to get it as good as the other cameras which are spot on with some trial and error and tweaking? So it’s purely the area / environment the camera is in and monitoring.?

Regards
 
You will be able to improve the image a lot by adjusting the image settings but I don't think you will get exactly the same kind of results as your other camera position because the locations are so different, one has no obstructions for IR light is very wide & open, the other is narrow, much darker, and has many more surfaces the light can bounce off.

In a tight space like this, we would usually either recommend a 10m IR camera like the DS-2CD2545FWD-I 4MP Mini Domes or a much narrower focal length of around 6m to reduce how much wall is visible.
 
Thank you, just home and adjusted the camera angle itself to make it more central.
Glad to hear I can get it much hopefully. Will get the firmware all updated then set about setting up the network and tweaking the camera(s)

As it’s very dark in that’s area I was going to fit a PIR activated floodlight / spotlight right at the house roof apex, so should we have an intruder it’s going to light the area up.

The other cameras also cover the entrances to that area - so all in all should be well covered.

Thanks again - I will post my results once I manage to get it all setup on the network.
 
Hi Dan,

Here’s an update, got the NVR and cameras updated to the lastest firmware, network connected and logged in via web browser.

Wow how much better is the web browser interface!

Had a play with the smart supplement light - no change on auto, but putting it to manual and dropping it to 5 to 10 helps but I lose clarity.

I then had a look at the backlight settings and flicked WDR to on - and bingo - a few seconds of adjustment and it’s perfect! But being a newbie what is WDR and will having it set to on as opposed to off or auto impact anything else? Such as day recording quality.

So many more settings to play around within the web browser by logging into the camera itself, but I want to read up / understand them first before going wild with them. Even things like my camera time zone were wrong, despite being ok in the NVR. My video quality is also on medium - should I bump it up to highest?

Also in video adjustment my camera is set to scene mode indoor as opposed to outdoor - does this need changing?
 
When you have so much wall showing like that you may get better results using the standard backlight compensation as opposed to WDR. WDR will even out the overall exposure whereas with backlight you can set the area - left, right, up, down, custom. BLC will intentionally over expose the area you're not bothered about - the wall, in order to correctly expose the darker area (though the wall will look too bright in normal daylight conditions)

A narrower fixed lens would have been a better choice but most distributors (for reasons unknown) prefer to stock only the 2.8mm ultra wide angle or 4mm wide angle and ignore the 6 and 8mm variants. Consider swapping it out for a varifocal 2.8 - 12mm model or even rotating that one into corridor mode so that your 16:9 ratio becomes 9:16 - narrowing the horizontal view while covering more beneath the camera.

Indoor, Outdoor etc just adjust the saturation, contrast, brightness, sharpness to pre defined levels. You can adjust those sliders manually to get the best image. In particular you'll find that lowering the contrast can hugely improve the night time image without adversely affecting the daytime colour image (unlike WDR which can leave colours looking washed out)

With regard to settings - time zone etc. The camera is plug and play so all available settings should be set in the NVR where available. Do not touch the network settings or timezone directly in the camera - it's unnecessary and will cause issues. The quality setting refers to the compression level. I always set mine to higher. The law of diminishing returns applies - you may get a marginally better quality image at the expense of an increased bit rate and decreased storage.
 
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In addition to what @JB1970 has said, you can if you only want the BLC/WDR setting enabled at night set the image settings to Scheduled-switch instead of Auto-switch and this will allow you to set different image settings for day and night.

Screenshot 2020-07-10 at 09.32.53.png

Screenshot 2020-07-10 at 09.33.01.png
 
Thanks Guys,

That’s great - a lot of that goes over my head as of now! But I’m pretty tech savvy - just cameras are new to me. So a bit of reading up and playing around will with setting I’m sure it will fall into place.

Can you explain how to use the BLR and also corridor mode

I actually changed the cameras region zone and set them and the NVR to sync every 24 hours with windowstime etc - was that not a good idea!

Is it worth changing the scenery to outdoor then and changing quality to highest? Or just best to play around with them?

Really appreciate all the help. My installer suggested the 2.8mm - in fairness probably never thought about the narrower area it would cover.

Here is how I got it last night.
 

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BLC stands for Back Light Compensation and as the name suggests it is a setting that was designed for scenarios where you have a very bright source of light behind the objects or area you want to record. (the most obvious example would be an office reception with big windows/doors letting in lots of light) But the BLC setting can also be used to reduce the overexposure of surfaces that are reflecting light like in your scene.

Corridor mode allows you to orientate the cameras in portrait (9:16) view rather than landscape (16:9) view and because it flips the horizontal FoV to vertical and vice versa you end up with a tall, narrow image which is better for corridors and alleyways. You can see a guide on it here

When it comes to image and video settings for CCTV cameras it is always a bit trial & error until you get an image you are happy with, as you only have 4 cameras on an 8-channel NVR I don't think you have anything to worry about if you up the quality to highest and use H.265+ compression.
 
Great stuff. I will carry on reading through the sticky posts tonight.

So basically as I have x4 cameras on the 8 channel NVR I should be ok to run them at full image quality. I assume if you ran x8 with all features running it would slow the NVR network down in a nutshell without being technical.


The cameras are 8MP and at 20fps and I do notice on live view in full screen they do pause / skip for a split second when cars drive by - would this be aided if I dropped them to a lower MP and got the frame rate up?
 
I actually changed the cameras region zone and set them and the NVR to sync every 24 hours with windowstime etc - was that not a good idea!

When you connect the cameras to the PoE ports of the NVR they are set up via the NVR. The NVR will ensure that the timezone is shown correctly, so you only need to set the timezone and NTP settings on the NVR. In fact the camera should not be able to access the internet to sync its time as the NVR keeps the cameras on a separate network segment (192.168.254.xxx) to your NVR's (and home) network.

Generally speaking, all settings that can be carried out on the NVR's local or web GUI should be set there. So you set the video settings for instance for each camera on the NVR GUI and the NVR will apply that setting to the camera. If you set it directly on the camera, the NVR GUI can sometimes show the previous setting until it is refreshed by rebooting (causing the NVR to read the settings of the connected camera again). There will be some settings in the camera GUI that aren't available in the NVR and it's fine to set those as required (I frame interval, smoothing setting would be an example)
 
Thanks JB1970.

That makes sense, managed to figure some of that out also last night

I have put the NVR into the host mode so I could get into each camera via their IP to play around with the settings the NVR doesn’t show, so I wasn’t sure if as the cameras are now on their own IP they would sync - it did appear to work.

I will carry on playing with the settings and try the methods suggested.

Thanks again to you both.
 
Hello Dan

I like the day / night scheduling option for the differenct settings, problem is its time related so over a period of time, the settings become out of date when it gets darker earlier and vise versa.

Is there an option that switches the settings by detecting a light level.

Thanks
 
Hello Dan

I like the day / night scheduling option for the differenct settings, problem is its time related so over a period of time, the settings become out of date when it gets darker earlier and vise versa.

Is there an option that switches the settings by detecting a light level.

Thanks

If I had a pound for every time someone had asked that (myself included)....As you say the variance in sunrise/sunset times throughout the year makes the day/night switchIng by time pretty unusable. Some of the higher end cameras can switch via an alarm input but strangely this doesn’t extend to the standard models featuring alarm inputs (some of the G2 AcuSense models)

I guess that the reason the settings switch cannot take place with the auto colour/mono change, is that if your night settings affect the exposure of the image, the camera would end up in a continual switching cycle
 
Thanks for reply. I'll send the cheque.

A lux level sensor that has a dead band to deal with any reswitching would resolve the issue. Perhaps not as easy technically as my brief explanation but I am sure there is a fix that coudl be implemented at a reaonsable price. I suppose another solution is live in Greenland, which isn't an option for me.
 
The ability to switch image parameters when the camera switches into night mode seems such an obvious requirement - I’m surprised it’s never been implemented. I’ve previously searched for a solution and some that are savvy with code have managed to manipulate the scheduled switching times in line with sunrise/sunset. As a 70s child I’m not savvy with code so I too may have to move to Greenland until Hik get their act together and implement this simple/essential requirement!
 
New Beer - Can I just say I was having similar issues with a narrow alleyway at night (fine in day time) and having googled for solutions this thread was a real help
 
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