It looks great during the day. I have a few 2mp cameras in the back yard with the same lighting situation as the location as I was mentioning and even with the Tendelux D20 supplemental lighting, it could use more light at night.For reference, here is a mower about 40-45' away. It's 55' to the middle of the path behind him. Keep in mind he was moving at a pretty good pace, so that lowered the quality some. 4MP would be much better, but this thing also puts out so much IR compared to what a ZE, Z4E, or Z12E will. I run supplemental IR floods for all of my other cameras because other than landscaping lights around the backyard I don't have much ambient light.
Try the Z4E and hold out for a refurb ZE. If they don't work you can always deploy them elsewhere and look into one of these again. I think most of my issues are install height and nothing to reflect the IR to help light up the scene, it's just shooting into nothingness.
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I have a ZE in use that is mounted on the fence on a square pole with same terrible ambient lighting and it does so much better. Yeah, there is a hotspot in the middle, but I can't see the triple lens being too much different. And with the Z4E and ZE combined, there should be a good amount of IR.
I scour eBay on a regular basis for Empiretech cameras. I have never seen a used ZE, and I haven't seen a refurbished ZE on Andy's page either. So, I just purchased one new
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