OK, some initial thoughts from the last 16 hours or so testing, 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. 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, 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!!
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!
During daylight this morning in low light, ghosting was still an issue in colour, even with shutter 0-2ms, once the light brighened 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. 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
