Dahua WizColor 5x59-PRO and SmartLight 5x59-IL new series

[CamCrazy]

Spent a little more time testing with some added motion ambient light. If I run the shutter to low once the motion light comes on, I lose the sidewalk area. Tonight, I just tried 2 different settings as it is windy and wet outside.



settings:

View attachment 230358




settings:


View attachment 230359

Get the NR down below 25 and see how it looks, maybe even below 20 if you can. Shutter still too high on manual settings, needs to be 0-6ms or less, ideally 0-4, also lowering gain will help. Getting the porch and street will be a struggle in colour with different lighting, stick with IR for that situation as mentioned above. Just try dropping the NR down to say 10-15 for experimentation, NR is really impacting mine, I've got NR off during the day, and below 20 with IR and LED, 18 and 19 from memory. You can even try reducing sharpening to say 25, again, to test, I have really been pushing the limits in low light and ultimately end up with low NR, low sharpening and very fast shutter. Don't be shy with the fps either, even if you only need 10-15, worth trying 20fps and keep the bitrate high, above 10000kb.

 

[CamCrazy]

Another night of testing in both IR and then full colour with LED's. Not much new to report, lots of fine tuning with both options, even with IR it is a struggle to get freeze frame I would prefer, might well swap in a 5442 bullet and remind myself how the IR works for that in this location. I know the IR is good on the latter but not had one in this exact placement, previous was a 2MP starlight. For colour at night with onboard LED's I am pretty much at the limit now, tweaks here and there have helped, settings shown here:

IR night settings below...



_____________________________________________________________________________

Colour night settings below...






Finding with the colour that it is still favourable at night due to being able to ID colour of vehicles and peoples clothing, yes it needs more light but the situation does not allow for it, so I have to tolerate the colour or fall back to IR. Switchover between night and day is a problem and at the moment I am bridging this with IR, works pretty well, for around 40mins to 1 hour the colour LED mode is just not enough to produce a bright enough picture, so IR steps in, then once daylight is enough full colour can resume with sufficient ambient. Light levels today are twice what they have been, this makes a huge difference, it will be interesting if you can see the moonlight effect on clearer nights with these cameras, it will help no doubt, not much but something is better than nothing.

 

[StevenFromTexas]

CamCrazy is doing a great job of running off potential Dahua customers. Meanwhile, I'm not spending any time diddling on my select few cameras . . . although I'd sure like to put the Dahua SD4A425DB-HNY cameras in the dumpster.

 

[CamCrazy]

CamCrazy is doing a great job of running off potential Dahua customers. Meanwhile, I'm not spending any time diddling on my select few cameras . . . although I'd sure like to put the Dahua SD4A425DB-HNY cameras in the dumpster.

I am trying not to be too brutal believe it or not, this new camera is just that, new, and as such I am testing it thoroughly, I own 20+ Dahua cameras, just purchased 8 in the last two weeks and recommend to others. I want this to work as much as anyone, hence I am feeding back what I can.

My experience with 'dome' style cameras was short and sweet, as such I would never touch another. Of course some installs will demand this type for vandal resistance, from a optical viewpoint it is a non starter for me.

 

[wittaj]

Another night of testing in both IR and then full colour with LED's. Not much new to report, lots of fine tuning with both options, even with IR it is a struggle to get freeze frame I would prefer, might well swap in a 5442 bullet and remind myself how the IR works for that in this location. I know the IR is good on the latter but not had one in this exact placement, previous was a 2MP starlight. For colour at night with onboard LED's I am pretty much at the limit now, tweaks here and there have helped, settings shown here:

IR night settings below...

View attachment 230363

_____________________________________________________________________________

Colour night settings below...

View attachment 230364




Finding with the colour that it is still favourable at night due to being able to ID colour of vehicles and peoples clothing, yes it needs more light but the situation does not allow for it, so I have to tolerate the colour or fall back to IR. Switchover between night and day is a problem and at the moment I am bridging this with IR, works pretty well, for around 40mins to 1 hour the colour LED mode is just not enough to produce a bright enough picture, so IR steps in, then once daylight is enough full colour can resume with sufficient ambient. Light levels today are twice what they have been, this makes a huge difference, it will be interesting if you can see the moonlight effect on clearer nights with these cameras, it will help no doubt, not much but something is better than nothing.

Your wall of texts are great and all, but without pictures, it is just a wall of texts.

Your idea of a good freeze frame may be different than someone else's idea of a good freeze frame and vice versa.

I get your concern for privacy and all, but any chance you could black out everything but just the person or vehicle in motion?

 

[CamCrazy]

Your wall of texts are great and all, but without pictures, it is just a wall of texts.

Your idea of a good freeze frame may be different than someone else's idea of a good freeze frame and vice versa.

I get your concern for privacy and all, but any chance you could black out everything but just the person or vehicle in motion?

That is very fair comment, the position of this camera makes it difficult sadly. My idea of freeze frame is identical quality to static objects in the scene, being able to see the detail on a tyre wall and tread pattern at 25 feet with the vehicle passing at 30-35mph. I will maybe just feed info back to Andy going forward and then add a summary here when I have exhausted testing. Hopefully the hours I've put in will prove useful for some.

 

[bigredfish]

yes, both videos have the Leds come on when I hit the porch, or when you hear the warning audio is when they come on. I have tried using IR but even with the leds coming on it will not go into color mode IF I have the shutter set to low. That only seems to work if left in auto mode. The motion light is a 18w 1800lm and is more than I really wanted. I'll try the IR method tomorrow night, but I don't want the warm leds to be on all night, the really draw you eye to the camera walking bye.

No im not advocating running the white LEDs all night

As I’ve said a number of times, I mean allowing either IVS and/or Smart Illumination to determine when the white LEDs come on. You’ll get a more useable image on the sidewalk in IR, lights come on when someone comes on porch, faster shutter.

Not sure if that’s a fixed lens or VF but with it as wide as it is, you’re just not going to get great ID past 15 ft anyway. Most all of my entrances are the same

 

[alekk]

So my 2nd T54PRO-ZE showed up late yesterday afternoon ... so FWI FWIW that here's a comparison if you are wondering about variance in manufacturing ... albeit just a data set of two. TL;DR is doesn't seem like much difference ... although the focus numbers weren't as close as I thought they would be.

Another FYI FWIW is that the first one came directly from China and arrived on 10/3/2025 with the second ordered on Amazon and arriving on 10/18/2025 - both ordered from @EMPIRETECANDY who (as typical) handled things well and I would recommend. Looking at the serial numbers (that are in Hex), the "newer" one is higher by "17D70" ... which is 97,649. But the difference in the MAC address is only "3F" which is 63 ... and the latest camera being LESS ... so who knows what that means?!? ;-)

Per the picture below (wide-angled distorted iPhone pic), I placed it pretty close and tried to get a similar field-of-view ... although the slant angle is a bit less. So this will slightly change the sharpness and exposure.

The pictures were taken at Noon on a cloudy day ... so the light is very flat. Manual settings were Shutter=5msec (1/200s), 100 Iris, ZERO Gain, and ZERO NR - there is plenty of light as I could easily go with a faster shutter speed without a reduced exposure.

Both cameras are set to ZOOM=550 ... and the Focus numbers were "about" 1730-top and 1650-bottom. I was surprised by this because there's not that much difference in the placement ... and that "Color Checker" is about 50' away. However, those numbers were repeatable using Auto-Focus and Area Focus. So a possible small difference there. Top picture is from the top camera.

Any T54PRO-ZE versus T54PRO-ZE testing people want me to do?

 

[alekk]

To followup on what I wrote above about the focus being different, here two snapshots (top picture from top camera) taken at the same time using the SAME focus setting (1732) at zoom=550. Since the camera's are within a few feet of each other (and the slant distance is less), clearly (or not so clearly per the fuzzy picture!) there's some variance in the factory calibration. Or maybe it just "moves around" over time ... although I did try doing a "Reset" and then pushed the zoom back to 550 and saw similar numbers/behavior.

NOTE: I INTENTIONALLY AND MANUALLY PUSHED THE FOCUS HERE.
THE CAMERA WILL NOT AUTO-FOCUS THIS BADLY ... unless you set ridiculous exposure values when it's dark outside and it "hunts."
The intent was to show that there is some sort of variance using the SAME ZOOM NUMBER and FORCING* the FOCUS to be the SAME NUMBER - the camera would NOT do this by itself.







NOTE: I INTENTIONALLY AND MANUALLY PUSHED THE FOCUS HERE.
THE CAMERA WILL NOT AUTO-FOCUS THIS BADLY ... unless you set ridiculous exposure values when it's dark outside and it "hunts."
The intent was to show that there is some sort of variance using the SAME ZOOM NUMBER and FORCING* the FOCUS to be the SAME NUMBER - the camera would NOT do this by itself.

 

[steve1225]

So my 2nd T54PRO-ZE showed up late yesterday afternoon ... so FWI FWIW that here's a comparison if you are wondering about variance in manufacturing ... albeit just a data set of two. TL;DR is doesn't seem like much difference.

Another FYI FWIW is that the first one came directly from China and arrived on 10/3/2025 with the second ordered on Amazon and arriving on 10/18/2025 - both ordered from @EMPIRETECANDY who (as typical) handled things well and I would recommend. Looking at the serial numbers (that are in Hex), the "newer" one is higher by "17D70" ... which is 97,649. But the difference in the MAC address is only "3F" which is 63 ... and the latest camera being LESS ... so who knows what that means?!? ;-)

Per the picture below (wide-angled distorted iPhone pic), I placed it pretty close and tried to get a similar field-of-view ... although the slant angle is a bit less. So this will slightly change the sharpness and exposure.

Open both files in the same viewer and rotate between them fast.

they are remotely not event similar field-of-view..

different height, different angle, different rotation..

ps. the same height is critical for comparison like this..

 

[alekk]

Yea, ideally would be at the same height ... but not easily done without drilling more holes in the side of the house.

Here's a GIF showing the two images ... and yes, they don't line up exactly (especially in the vertical which would be especially impossible), but I think the horizontal FOV is fairly close (as noted, zoom settings were identically 550 ... albeit focus was different, so that changes the focal length slightly) and rotation angle doesn't look too shabby to me - the main difference is, of course, the different placement location.

Regardless, I wanted to see if anything significantly different in terms of exposure and sharpness ... which I don't see here ... albeit I think the images could be better. Note that even with NR=0, there's still some "smearing" of the road versus the 5442-S3 ... which I'll talk more about soon.

 

[bigredfish]

To followup on what I wrote above about the focus being different, here two snapshots (top picture from top camera) taken at the same time using the SAME focus setting (1732) at zoom=550. Since the camera's are within a few feet of each other (and the slant distance is less), clearly (or not so clearly per the fuzzy picture!) there's some variance in the factory calibration. Or maybe it just "moves around" over time ... although I did try doing a "Reset" and then pushed the zoom back to 550 and saw similar numbers/behavior.


View attachment 230441


View attachment 230442

Oh my

 

[alekk]

Oh my

I just added a BOLD STICKY in the post above in case it wasn't clear what I was doing here.
If you just look at the picture, it's certainly worth a OMG that is BAD, BAD, BAD ... but I intentionally screwed it up.

NOTE: I INTENTIONALLY AND MANUALLY PUSHED THE FOCUS HERE.
THE CAMERA WILL NOT AUTO-FOCUS THIS BADLY ... unless you set ridiculous exposure values when it's dark outside and it "hunts."
The intent was to show that there is some sort of variance using the SAME ZOOM NUMBER and FORCING* the FOCUS to be the SAME NUMBER - the camera would NOT do this by itself.

 

[bigredfish]

Oh good

 

[eman]

Ok so I thought I would thr
View attachment frontoxxv_20251019_132020-20251019_132405_itvjrr.mp4
ow up a normal everyday going about life video of the 54pro from inside the window.