Gotta love the 1/1.8 Image Sensor

[jfjones]

This time of year, in Michigan, with a little bit of snow and some moonlight. Night time video looks like high noon. A couple of nights earlier we had full cloud cover and still had lots of light. The last few days the IR never turned on.

I purchased a black IPC-T54IR-ZE-S3 from Andy two years ago to watch the rear of my house. I do have a PTZ mounted at the peak of my workshop but when the trees leaf out I lose most of the rear of my house. We have an inground pool with a ground mount box for the pool fiber lighting. I installed an IP over line voltage converter (Comtrend Wave 2 Powerline PG-9182PoE) in my workshop at the rear of the property which is where the power feeds the pool pump and lighting. Installed the other end of the line voltage to IP (Comtrend Adapter PG-9182PT) in the lighting box. Mounted the black T54IR on the black lighting box (blends in pretty good). The IP units work great, have not had an issue since installation.

Jan 1, 2025 Midnight




Dec 4, 2025 3:45 am



Pool Fence with Fiber Light Box



Camera Mounted on Fiber Box

 

[CCTVCam]

Although the pictures look decent at night, full time colour isn't possible with the 5442 in very low light. You can see the grain / noise in both of the 1st pics which suggests you're using high gain and slow shutter to achieve it. I'd hazard a guess that if someone entered the picture moving they'd be ghosted or blurry. A gain of less than 50 and shutter of 8ms or lower (preferably 6ms or lower) is kind of where the settings need to be. The 5442 is a great camera, but you probably definately need to be on IR at that time of night unless there's a lot of supplemental lighting. That said, to get even a picture at all at that time of night dops show what a great sensor the 1/1.8 is. I just wouldn't say it has practical appl,ication in full colour at that time.

 

[jfjones]

Thanks for the notes. Full time color at night is not a goal. I know the limitations of the cameras. The Image and exposure settings are all still at factory defaults (everything is at 50). Have not adjusted any of them yet. The JPEG capture is as at a quality of 50% as set in Blue Iris. I will someday tweak and tune.

On one of Andy's lottery I won a 4k full color 8mp (IPC-Color4K-T-3.6mm). I thought, for kicks, I'd try to set it up side-by-side with the T54IR-ZE-S3 and do some comparison testing. Courious to see the 1/1.2 at 8mp compared to the 1/1.8 4MP. Once the weather is a little warmer.