OK, some initial thoughts from the last 16 hours or so testing the 54Pro ZE, before the good stuff goes out of my head!
The LED and IR still images at night are pretty insane, this has been noted already, no doubt about it, also the LED's are quite bright, this is nice. Last night I focused mainly on colour with LED's on, why wouldn't you! - I tried to keep 3D NR below 50, did try it at 30 but ended pushing it up some more, 2D below 25, bit rate 10000-12000+, 20-25fps and matching iframe, h264h, sharpness below 50, closer to 25-30 in fact. This camera is mounted 20 feet up, looking down at around 45 degrees onto driveway, path and some road, cars pass through the scene so excellent for motion testing. Zoom is on 1617 or about 75%, I may pull this back a bit tonight, see how that helps. I will be comparing to 5442 original and 2MP starlight from here on, later in this week/next, I will be able to compare to 4K-T also. Also note there is no ambient light at all!
Obvious thing, I see cars in colour at night, this is a first for me so big bonus, the static images are quite nice indeed, bright and in colour, we like. Maybe slightly less natural looking than 5442 original series. Freezing motion on this beast in colour at night is a bit like trying to catch a fly with your bare hands, bit of a struggle, keep in mind I am pushing this thing hard, target is 20 feet from the camera. I tried mostly everything last night, in fairness I can ID the vehicle type and also the colour, this is good, but there is ghosting, tearing, smearing and artifacts, that is bad for me anyway. Tonight I will to some more testing in colour but also focus on IR to see how that works out. I will also try knocking the fps back to 15 to see if this helps with processing. Interestingly, I also tried HDR at one point, this actually looked quite good when pushed high, more natural detail somehow, but motion this seemed to struggle, more testing for that also tonight! few hours burned yesterday for the cause!! Probably the takeaway right now is that this camera requires quite a lot of light at night to function well for freezing motion in colour.
I also need to play more with 'smooth motion' particularly at night, initially I find clear to be better, this I guess shouldn't surprise anyone, but need to confirm more how smooth performs on improving or degrading night colour motion! Also, I think during the day at least we might forget how well the 2MP starlight performs, they might be old but damn good sensor still, detail on the 5442 series still wins and night images are another story in favour of the 5442! but the 2MP starlight is a nice natural looking image.
During daylight this morning in low light, ghosting was still an issue in colour, even with shutter 0-2ms, once the light brightened up things looked more like the 5442, freeze motion was better, running at 0-1ms (yes!!) I would say the sharpness on freeze frame matches the 5442, but the 5442 would only need 0-4ms to do this. If I push shutter to 0-3ms you can immediately see motion blur, slight but it is there, it needs to be either 0-1ms or maybe 0-2ms depending on your tolerance for blur and also light levels at your locations, it is dull and overcast here, 33115 lux according to my weather station. Well, there is more testing to come during today, then when darkness comes I will be back to the freeze motion challenge, IR should be better with this, I did briefly run IR last night, looked pretty good although I suspect still some of the hang ups mentioned above re the colour and freeze motion. Yes, I am obsessed with freezing motion, it is critical and hence why I keep bashing on about it
