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

[CCTVCam]

Good news, the led warning light works as configured. I could not trigger it to go off by walking down the street or sidewalk anywhere but within my IVS rule. Maybe the factory reset fixed the issue, not sure, but it is working now. I did adjust the exposure compensation down to 9 from 50, as it was a little bright. I did mess with manual trying different shutter speeds and gain but never did see it much better than auto in my case. The led light did wash out my face when I got right in front of cam.

You need a much faster shutter as well. Lots of motion blur. I never use below 6ms & prefer 4ms with light present. That may also assist with the washing out close to the cam as it will lower the brightness, but not the under exposure further away that may beomce darker than you'd prefer.

I was expecting with the new dynamic range to see a much more evenly lit video and with the increased sensitivity, more brightness on the patio steps / area especially given you don't seem to have such a fast shutter set - I'm guesing around 12ms from the blur. Maybe though they're trying to maintain some realism rather than a flat picture. I have to hold my hands up that I'd probably be complaining if it was flat! The problem with the blur is recognition is limited and still shots will be poor. I hope this is just down to settings because otherwise I'm not sure there's any real advancement here. The 4Kt for it's all it's failings still seems to kill it at night. Once the LED's come on, the patio is better lit but the background area becomes under exposed as the camera seems unable to maintain the dynamic range. Less of a concern if all the perps are in the foreground, althougth that's something not guaranteed to happen.

These are the stills I could pull from the video -in the 1st one you're a fuzzy blur like from a cheap brand camera but the grass around is reasonably sharp (?) suggesting it's not likely much of a depth of field or focus issue but most likely shutter. This surprises me slightly as the camera probably has the aperture wide open at this point. That said smaller sensor... Looking at the grass you probably wouldn't be perfectly sharp off the patio, but there'd be a usable image if the shutter issue wasn't present. I'd reduce shutter to a max of 6ms. This is the stillfrom outside the patio area with the current shutter speed, it's consumer level and pretty useless for recognition highlighting the settings issue:




The 2nd one from the patio itself where you aren't washed out, also suggests to me shutter as the main issue :




I don't think either shot atm would stand up in Court as evidence. In fairness where you walked up towards the cam you would get a shot, but you can't guarantee someone would walk in that direction. They could be out to steal your chair, the pots or mail in that back corner.

BTW you mention Exposure Compensation. Be aware, this isn't a magic setting. I believe it's adjusting brightness, contrast & maybe gain behind the scenes to make the picture brighter. So the result you're seeing may be different to the settings you actually set. So beware you may gain a brighter image at detriment to other parameters.

 

[bigredfish]

Good news, the led warning light works as configured. I could not trigger it to go off by walking down the street or sidewalk anywhere but within my IVS rule. Maybe the factory reset fixed the issue, not sure, but it is working now. I did adjust the exposure compensation down to 9 from 50, as it was a little bright. I did mess with manual trying different shutter speeds and gain but never did see it much better than auto in my case. The led light did wash out my face when I got right in front of cam.

Good job! Thanks for this.

So we confirmed the Smart Illum was the likely issue with the light.

The scene is one of the toughest, heavily backlit, which is where these cameras with onboard lights really make a difference.

And yeah like others I think you’ll have to run a faster shutter to reduce motion blur. Auto rarely works at night. I would try 0-8.33ms or 1/120 as a start. With the white LEDs and the way it picks up light that may be enough? The more light the slower you can get away with to a point. I’m running the 3449Pro in a similar backlit scene at 0-5.5ms

 

[duplo]

Shutter speed needs to be faster, that is my take on this one anyway, this will darken the scene slightly but should fix the motion blur

one could not generalize anything, all depends on given light, what is your aim etc.

but to my opinion on this cam its more caused by gain. Sure shutter is also a factor and both are connected, but the picture highly suffer on higher gain levels when it comes to blurr.
You see it in the video he posted first.
When the white light kicks in, you see how much gain is used.





After the software reduced the gain (and also the shutter for sure) the street looks much better.
This is a tough scene for auto mode, because it will always try to bright the foreground as best as it can.

So both needs to be reduced somehow to get the best out of the cam.

In my testing higher gain levels where the main cause for most motion blurr, where higher shutter levels has much less blurr effect. Sure, if you use high levels like 30, 50, 100 it will blurr alot.

Here are two screenshots from yesterday (it was raining).
On both pictures range from 0-25 where used for shutter.
On has gain 0-50, the other has gain 0-60. Think you will notice a difference.

View attachment 20251009224731-20251009224830.mp4

For my eyes it looks like someone added sharpness +30%, but you notice the rain tends to be pixelized bit more. Its a balance act on this cam.
Thats why i said earlier its hard to dial in manual settings on this cam.
For me the cam tends to use too much gain, always.
You should use manual settings and use settings which fits your aim best.

 

[bigredfish]

one could not generalize anything, all depends on given light, what is your aim etc.

but to my opinion on this cam its more caused by gain. Sure shutter is also a factor and both are connected, but the picture highly suffer on higher gain levels when it comes to blurr.
You see it in the video he posted first.
When the white light kicks in, you see how much gain is used.

View attachment 229627
View attachment 229628
View attachment 229626

After the software reduced the gain (and also the shutter for sure) the street looks much better.
This is a tough scene for auto mode, because it will always try to bright the foreground as best as it can.

So both needs to be reduced somehow to get the best out of the cam.

In my testing higher gain levels where the main cause for most motion blurr, where higher shutter levels has much less blurr effect. Sure, if you use high levels like 30, 50, 100 it will blurr alot.

Here are two screenshots from yesterday (it was raining).
On both pictures range from 0-25 where used for shutter.
On has gain 0-50, the other has gain 0-60. Think you will notice a difference.

View attachment 229630

For my eyes it looks like someone added sharpness +30%, but you notice the rain tends to be pixelized bit more. Its a balance act on this cam.
Thats why i said earlier its hard to dial in manual settings on this cam.
For me the cam tends to use too much gain, always.
You should use manual settings and use settings which fits your aim best.

I understand and agree that the cam relies too heavily on Gain, but in my opinion the Gain simply masks or accentuates the existing motion blur.
Darken an image by reducing Gain and you'll see less perceptible motion blur. Increase gain and you accentuate that perception. I can produce similar results using max/min levels of Gamma.

Again not really disagreeing, just that I think exposure time is still king when it comes to freezing motion and reducing blur from moving targets, but heavy handed use of Gain either direction can mask or enhance what we see.

 

[duplo]

I understand and agree that the cam relies too heavily on Gain, but in my opinion the Gain simply masks or accentuates the existing motion blur.
Darken an image by reducing Gain and you'll see less perceptible motion blur. Increase gain and you accentuate that perception. I can produce similar results using max/min levels of Gamma.

Again not really disagreeing, just that I think exposure time is still king when it comes to freezing motion and reducing blur from moving targets, but heavy handed use of Gain either direction can mask or enhance what we see.

I agree with you. More gain or Gamma shouldnt worse the image that much.
Also agree that less gain/gamma adds more contrast trick the brain see more sharpness/better image.

On this cam its maybe either related to their enhanced noise reduction they had to use to fight against the sensor or their hdr/wizard magic color /hdr/lun/whatever tech

i really dont know. All what i can say is that after testing its good not using too much gain, better more shutter. But really depends on scene. Not much options the software gives to dial in. gain/shutter/nr

 

[wittaj]

Shutter speed needs to be faster, that is my take on this one anyway, this will darken the scene slightly but should fix the motion blur - Image looking pretty good elsewhere though.

Maybe try this:

Shutter 0 - 15 or at least 0 - 20

Gain 0 - 50 or 0 - 60 to compensate for shutter

3D NR to less than 40 if possible

2D NR to less than 30 if possible

Image below was for my reference! maybe even try shutter priority using somewhere between 15 and 20. Disclaimer, I don't have one of these yet but have plenty of testing experience with other Dahua models

View attachment 229625

Shutter speeds between 15 to 20ms is way too slow.

Most dahua cams the exposure compensation only works (or is supposed to only work) with auto shutter. Doesn't mean some haven't seen improvement on manual, but that is likely a bug.

NR should go as low as possible. And don't be afraid of a noisy static image if it clears up with motion.

 

[Tinman]

Well, now I have all kinds of settings to try LOL I also have those deck lights that are old blue telephone pole insulators. They seem to make the grass too green when on. They shut off later in night. Keep in mind I run another camera in the other porch corner using IR which I also like, but also like the color mode to see what color of clothes...etc. I'll try all the suggestion everyone posted and thanks to all for help and feedback on the cam. It's exactly why I bought it, something fun to play with

 

[CamCrazy]

Shutter speeds between 15 to 20ms is way too slow.

Most dahua cams the exposure compensation only works (or is supposed to only work) with auto shutter. Doesn't mean some haven't seen improvement on manual, but that is likely a bug.

NR should go as low as possible. And don't be afraid of a noisy static image if it clears up with motion.

I realise this but was trying to soften the blow but 15-20ms will be a world apart from 33+ Most of mine run 4-6ms day or night, agreed on the NR, I would take some noise over smearing and blur.

 

[CamCrazy]

As a general rule I would say never use shutter speed above 6-8ms, there we go, brutal but most likely true! just have to deal with the fall out on exposure and such like

For reference I average about 4-6ms shutter and try to keep gain below 30 during daylight hours if possible, night requires testing of course dependant on location.

Getting my hands on some of these next week, shall put them through their paces in worst case conditions for light and give plenty feedback

 

[CamCrazy]

one could not generalize anything, all depends on given light, what is your aim etc.

I would say that there is never a reason to use above 8-10ms shutter speed, so fair to say for shutter you can generalize that below 6-8ms is a good standard.

 

[CamCrazy]

Well, now I have all kinds of settings to try LOL I also have those deck lights that are old blue telephone pole insulators. They seem to make the grass too green when on. They shut off later in night. Keep in mind I run another camera in the other porch corner using IR which I also like, but also like the color mode to see what color of clothes...etc. I'll try all the suggestion everyone posted and thanks to all for help and feedback on the cam. It's exactly why I bought it, something fun to play with

You should see some nice improvements afterwards, lots of settings on these new cams by all accounts. With the NR settings, just keep knocking them lower until you start to get minor noise creeping in, similar to some degree with the shutter speed but probably best just set it at 8ms and see how dark this makes the image, I didn't check but make sure fps matches iframe and try to keep bitrate maybe 10000 if you can, maybe even higher for testing initially. Some might say the bitrate isn't necessary but it normally makes a difference if outright quality is the end goal, especially on cameras 4MP upwards.

 

[alekk]

but to my opinion on this cam its more caused by gain. Sure shutter is also a factor and both are connected, but the picture highly suffer on higher gain levels when it comes to blurr.
You see it in the video he posted first.
When the white light kicks in, you see how much gain is used.

I agree that when the light kicks on, the background gets much darker ... so some adjustment in the exposure triangle is being done.

I asked earlier about if it's possible that the Noise Reduction is introducing some blur. I.e. my understanding of 3D NR is it's a multi-frame continuous assessment that average out the "dancing noisy pixels" ... so when you are walking by the sidewalk in the shade, is there some contribution from the 3D NR which is it thinks the shadowy motion might be noise, so it's smearing it out?

For instance, if I'm at the limits of the camera, and there's a considerable amount of noise, I can make a lot of that go away in the static image by cranking the 3D NR waayyy up there ... but then that itself seems to introduce blur for the reasons as stated above.

Probably a minor contributor, so maybe mostly an academic question.

I agree with what what @bigredfish said that "The scene is one of the toughest, heavily backlit" ... and dynamic range is going to suffer as you reach the limits of the camera.

 

[alekk]

Well, now I have all kinds of settings to try LOL I also have those deck lights that are old blue telephone pole insulators. They seem to make the grass too green when on. They shut off later in night. Keep in mind I run another camera in the other porch corner using IR which I also like, but also like the color mode to see what color of clothes...etc. I'll try all the suggestion everyone posted and thanks to all for help and feedback on the cam. It's exactly why I bought it, something fun to play with

Love that "something fun to play with" attitude - "he who dies with the most toys (and got to do the most "tinkering") wins! ;-)"

 

[Chokolinho]

My cameras will arrive on Monday. I'll post something about the AS and ZE cameras then. For manual, leave the 1R on?

 

[alekk]

My cameras will arrive on Monday. I'll post something about the AS and ZE cameras then. For manual, leave the 1R on?

Looking forward to a AS versus ZE shootout.

Would love to see a no-IR, no-LED (i.e. color only) comparison in very low light using manual settings - curious what the F/1.0 lens of the AS can do.

 

[bigredfish]

I agree that when the light kicks on, the background gets much darker ... so some adjustment in the exposure triangle is being done.

I asked earlier about if it's possible that the Noise Reduction is introducing some blur. I.e. my understanding of 3D NR is it's a multi-frame continuous assessment that average out the "dancing noisy pixels" ... so when you are walking by the sidewalk in the shade, is there some contribution from the 3D NR which is it thinks the shadowy motion might be noise, so it's smearing it out?

For instance, if I'm at the limits of the camera, and there's a considerable amount of noise, I can make a lot of that go away in the static image by cranking the 3D NR waayyy up there ... but then that itself seems to introduce blur for the reasons as stated above.

Probably a minor contributor, so maybe mostly an academic question.

I agree with what what @bigredfish said that "The scene is one of the toughest, heavily backlit" ... and dynamic range is going to suffer as you reach the limits of the camera.

NR with any value above 50 will create motion blur. I try to keep it as close to 40 as possible. There is always a balancing act between a faster shutter, Gain, and needing more NR but once I approach 50, it’s time to add more light and increase shutter speed and/or reduce Gain.

This camera seems to push high Gain levels as @duplo mentioned along with the magic secret brightening wizard under the hood, it will make us rethink how to reduce noise and blur.

 

[Tinman]

NR with any value above 50 will create motion blur. I try to keep it as close to 40 as possible. There is always a balancing act between a faster shutter, Gain, and needing more NR but once I approach 50, it’s time to add more light and increase shutter speed and/or reduce Gain.

This camera seems to push high Gain levels as @duplo mentioned along with the magic secret brightening wizard under the hood, it will make us rethink how to reduce noise and blur.

Do you apply this thinking to daytime as well, or just night or low light scenarios ?

 

[bigredfish]

Daytime also. Typically daytime I can run NR values at 25-30 with faster 0-2 or 0-3ms shutter

More light almost always means we can run faster shutter and less NR.

It always comes back to light. Like our eyes cameras need light. The digital wizardry being used in these and other latest cameras simply attempt to amplify available light. With that comes more digital noise to overcome.

How well the wizard masks or overcomes that noise while still minimizing blur is the secret sauce

 

[alekk]

It always comes back to light. Like our eyes cameras need light. The digital wizardry being used in these and other latest cameras simply attempt to amplify available light. With that comes more digital noise to overcome.

How well the wizard masks or overcomes that noise while still minimizing blur is the secret sauce

GREAT POST - love the wording ... as yea, as we say in the photo world, it's all about the light!

 

[CCTVCam]

I understand and agree that the cam relies too heavily on Gain, but in my opinion the Gain simply masks or accentuates the existing motion blur.
Darken an image by reducing Gain and you'll see less perceptible motion blur. Increase gain and you accentuate that perception. I can produce similar results using max/min levels of Gamma.

Again not really disagreeing, just that I think exposure time is still king when it comes to freezing motion and reducing blur from moving targets, but heavy handed use of Gain either direction can mask or enhance what we see.

I agree 100%. If it was gain that was the main problem, all dark areas would visibly have grain and light areas as well if it was really high. However, the picture looks very grain free. Whilst a slightly high gain setting here can't be ruled out due to the appearance of his face / clothing (albeit if grain is involved it's masked by the blur), the main culprit is shutter. He should also note the comments on exposure compensation. This isn't a magic fix. All it is a preset curve that's playing around with brightness, contrast and possibly gain behind the scenes to increase the dynamic range in some or all areas of the picture. As a result, it can have downsides to it just as if these parameters were adjusted manually.