flynreelow
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Dahua WizColor 5x59-PRO and SmartLight 5x59-IL new series
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CCTVCam
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Even that IR scene is aweful suggesting the IR LED's are weak in nature or the output isn't 100%. I'm afraid that just killed all hope for me and these cameras. As BigRedish said, most cameas can look good at night with a slow enough shutter / high enough gain. But that doesn't give a good picture unless you're into star viewing. The sad reality is a 4kt would be all over that scene. It might take a little more light to get a good picture at ultra low shutter, but I'm going to estimate the light from those garden lights would give a usable picture at probably 8ms and maybe even lower. Just shows you can't beat sensor size / sensitivity with a camera. Ultimately as I alluded to above, all the AI is likely doing in my opinion is adjusting for brightness and contrast and then using intelligent filtering / interpolation to remove most of the induced noise back out. A nice trick but that may improve pictures ovber a non AI camera, but ultimately one that can't beat physics.
The IR from my testing is OK but nothing special, my 49225 PTZ's will still run circles round them at short to medium range, but that is not uncommon, my 5442 series bullets have the best IR. The 4K-T would no doubt beat the Pro in a straight night battle, with that scene. I have two overlapping 54Pro's and in colour at night the 4K-T is incredibly good, frankly during the day that also stands, even in some case when the Pro is zoomed on subject and the 4K-T is not! The 4K-T can freeze motion at slower shutter speeds and with a cleaner image.
I would much prefer if Dahua improved things like the profile schedule, this could be linked to local sunrise/sunset times, rather than spend time on automated features which potential degrade the image.
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StevenFromTexas
Getting comfortable
In all seriousness, why has this concept been so difficult to understand for those of you thinking this Artificial Stupidity stuff was going to be the wizz-bang solution to make chocolate pie out of dog-poop?
Never mind, I don't need a reply.
In my setup, the 4K both day and night produces a picture with great dynamic range.
At this moment (around 16:00) the shadows on our driveway are darker with the 4K (compared with the PRO), but it handles highlights amazingly well. (blown out on the PRO).
Actually; the PRO (even with the same settings) tend to have a brighter image than the 4K; whether it's usable or not (brighter image also causes the blown out highlights)
Also; I tend to use SSA and that doesn't seem to do much on the PRO (BLC, HLC and WDR does).
Don't know if I'm going to keep the 4K or the Pro at this top location (above a regular S3 set to IR during the night), but I'm definitely keeping one and have it set to color mode 24/7. Color adds so much during the night.
At this moment (around 16:00) the shadows on our driveway are darker with the 4K (compared with the PRO), but it handles highlights amazingly well. (blown out on the PRO).
Actually; the PRO (even with the same settings) tend to have a brighter image than the 4K; whether it's usable or not (brighter image also causes the blown out highlights)
Also; I tend to use SSA and that doesn't seem to do much on the PRO (BLC, HLC and WDR does).
Don't know if I'm going to keep the 4K or the Pro at this top location (above a regular S3 set to IR during the night), but I'm definitely keeping one and have it set to color mode 24/7. Color adds so much during the night.
I find these Pro's very polarising! there are some situations in the day where the playback quality can look better than the 4K, I also find as you have that the shadows can be darker. As I type this, the light is fading fast here. Sunset was officially 7 minutes ago, the 54ProZE is already in B&W producing very sub par footage, blurred even though shutter is stupid fast. The S3 turret is still in colour and looking pretty reasonable, freezing motion well. The 4K-T is not only in colour (it has no choice of course!) but producing incredible footage, perfect freeze frame quality in very dark conditions! crazy camera, I love it
Just to add, the 54Pro mentioned above, will soon be getting replaced by a 4K-X, the Pro will be relegated to a less critical location as a close range camera, sadly.
flynreelow
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thats strange, as i remember the 4K-T getting a lot of hate on this forum.I find these Pro's very polarising! there are some situations in the day where the playback quality can look better than the 4K, I also find as you have that the shadows can be darker. As I type this, the light is fading fast here. Sunset was officially 7 minutes ago, the 54ProZE is already in B&W producing very sub par footage, blurred even though shutter is stupid fast. The S3 turret is still in colour and looking pretty reasonable, freezing motion well. The 4K-T is not only in colour (it has no choice of course!) but producing incredible footage, perfect freeze frame quality in very dark conditions! crazy camera, I love it
Just to add, the 54Pro mentioned above, will soon be getting replaced by a 4K-X, the Pro will be relegated to a less critical location as a close range camera, sadly.
Yes, appears that the 4K has it faults and limitations like many cameras, low light performance is not one of them thankfully
For me it performs in two critical areas, low light performance and the ability to freeze action very well. Oh, and I guess a third would be 8MP resolution, which is hard to ignore!
flynreelow
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is you 4kT blurry in any parts of the image?Yes, appears that the 4K has it faults and limitations like many cameras, low light performance is not one of them thankfully
Like any camera it really depends on the scene. I love mine looking over the canal.
If you can run the white lights at night it does pretty well.
Biggest complaint was the focus area. On some, there is a softer focus from 20 or 25ft out to about 40ft. But it takes a really keen eye to see it
There is an obvious close focus distance of about 6-8ft depending on lens
I believe the extreme edges of the lens/image are not as good as they could be, but the only 'blur' is the out of focus area which is anything closer than about 4-5 feet.
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Yep, concur with that, as they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, or in this case 'pictures'
flynreelow
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those are some stunning pictures
flynreelow
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yea, but also lots of extra supplemental lightingAnd all with target movement so not just pretty pictures.
They look pretty good with just the onboard or some crossover from another white LED camera, mine are in a black hole for light and I have been quite impressed.
No supplemental out back. Just the onboard and my weak ass kerosene lantern street light out front.
If you’ve been playing along at home you know that I can’t get an acceptable image out front with said street light from the new 54PRO with its onboard lights ALONG with the onboard lights from the 4K-X
IF you can run the onboard white light and/or have some medium supplemental ambient light, there is currently nothing in the Dahua lineup that can compete with the 4K-X/T
flynreelow
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yea, those backyard captures with just he on board light look great.
for some reason thought u also had some flood lights back there, but think that was someone else.
great captures
CCTVCam
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In all seriousness, why has this concept been so difficult to understand for those of you thinking this Artificial Stupidity stuff was going to be the wizz-bang solution to make chocolate pie out of dog-poop?
Never mind, I don't need a reply.
In fairness it's a step forward over the 5442, and worth buying if that was your consideration if the 4kt's limitations are off putting for you as a buyer. My point is not to rubbish it, but merely to say that AI has it's limitations and you still can't get around the limitations of sensor size beyond a modest improvement via AI. For me I wouldn't personally buy it as I'm not seeing any improvement over the 4Kt but that's because I have a 4kt. If you have a camera with lesser low light capability, then the 54Pro is definately worth a consideration.
We've got a couple of threads going on about various issues, so I created a separate post specifically about my testing of the "IR sensitivity differences between 5442-S3 and T54PRO-ZE ... puzzling results" - title and conclusions updated after further testing.
Snippet/summary from thread.
In some of the discussions about trying to get good night-time motion capture with the 54PRO's, I commented that "Is it possible that the "3D NR" on the 54PRO that (as you can imagine with something that "averages" over multiple frames) just does dismally with moving objects in low light?" and "is it possible that the S3 IR light is better ... and/or maybe the S3 sensor is more sensitive to IR than the 54PRO?"
So I ran some simple tests to assess IR sensitivity of the 5442 versus the 54PRO ... short answer is if anything, the 54PRO appears to be more sensitive (in this DAYTIME scene) in IR as the image is brighter ... albeit some/most/all of this could be processing. HOWEVER, at night (which obviously is the use case for IR), I found the opposite.
So what I thought would be an easy test ended up providing puzzling results!!!
It's frustrating that my results were not consistent between day & night (photons should be photons!) and I can only guess that there some funky processing going on that is not allowing me to truly assess lens/sensor capability.
Note these tests do NOT tell us anything about possible differences between the IR LIGHT ... and how the camera (smartly) adjusts exposure from that.
Nor do they tell us anything about possible "3D NR multi-frame averaging" that the 54PRO may be overly aggressive with compared to the 5442 which would result in a cleaner STATIC image, but would cause more motion blur.
Snippet/summary from thread.
In some of the discussions about trying to get good night-time motion capture with the 54PRO's, I commented that "Is it possible that the "3D NR" on the 54PRO that (as you can imagine with something that "averages" over multiple frames) just does dismally with moving objects in low light?" and "is it possible that the S3 IR light is better ... and/or maybe the S3 sensor is more sensitive to IR than the 54PRO?"
So I ran some simple tests to assess IR sensitivity of the 5442 versus the 54PRO ... short answer is if anything, the 54PRO appears to be more sensitive (in this DAYTIME scene) in IR as the image is brighter ... albeit some/most/all of this could be processing. HOWEVER, at night (which obviously is the use case for IR), I found the opposite.
So what I thought would be an easy test ended up providing puzzling results!!!
It's frustrating that my results were not consistent between day & night (photons should be photons!) and I can only guess that there some funky processing going on that is not allowing me to truly assess lens/sensor capability.
Note these tests do NOT tell us anything about possible differences between the IR LIGHT ... and how the camera (smartly) adjusts exposure from that.
Nor do they tell us anything about possible "3D NR multi-frame averaging" that the 54PRO may be overly aggressive with compared to the 5442 which would result in a cleaner STATIC image, but would cause more motion blur.
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