White Car Negatively Affects Exposure Day and Night (White car cannot be moved.) - A Solution - Yours?

[Looksee]

I want to control the reflection from a white car. I can't block it with a matte because I wouldn't be able to view that area when the car is gone. I'm thinking of perhaps a flat black camouflage covering of some sort to place over it. Anyone else weird enough to consider such things?

 

[jeremyx]

Not weird at all, a white car in a big part of the frame is a pretty common cause of this. Before covering it, it might be worth changing how the camera meters. Most cameras base exposure on the whole frame, so a large bright patch like a white car pulls everything else darker.

A few settings aimed at exactly that:

1. Backlight compensation with a custom area. On Dahua it's BLC set to Customized, on Hikvision it's BLC with a selected area. You draw the area over the part of the scene you care about and exposure is based on that, so the car stops dragging it down.
2. HLC (highlight compensation) suppresses the brightest areas when exposing. It's mostly meant for headlights at night, but it can help with a reflective car too.
3. At night, if the issue is the camera's own IR bouncing off the car, Smart IR or turning the IR down (or a separate illuminator aimed away from the car) usually helps more than exposure settings.

If you post the camera model, people here can point you to the exact menu for it.

 

[Looksee]

Thanks for the backlight suggestion, @jeremyx. I hadn't gotten to a point to play with those. Well, I had and didn't know it. My problem affects a IPC-B54IR-Z4E-S3 and a couple of others. I'll test the BC settings. I know where they are.

 

[bigredfish]

Those are good suggestions/techniques

Every scene is different.


On daytime, I have a problem with big ass white boats and glare from the water. Limiting Exposure in a range can be a big help
By limiting exposure with a range, trimming Gain, and a little less Exposure Comp, along with HLC at 1, I minimize it




You can see the shutter close and open back up

View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20261016132740_20261016132758.mp4

 

[bigredfish]

Night on the Z4 can depend a lot on how tightly zoomed you are

I've turned off Illum Overexposure as I found it too severe

On most white cars I',m now happy with running the tight Exposure range
But on some - like the reflective on the police cars, autoexposure still decides what it wants to do




View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch15_20261018202322_20261018202337.mp4


View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch15_20260818222810_20260818222844.mp4

 

[bigredfish]

The biggest challenge is balancing settings for the Big white car or boat and still maintaining good clear ID on humans, which is my primary target


View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch15_20260916000500_20260916000509.mp4