Worlds First Review - Dahua - IPC-Color4K-X / DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED - Full Color 4K Camera

[steve1225]

Never knew the 4kt had been revised. The original appears to have some issues incl. but not limited to DOF, focus issues and clarity compared to 5442, processing power / memory (too many things enabled on camera caused issues). It also doens't like power being withdraw and on mine at least, settings get lost or the camera itself becomes uncontactable when IP addresses reset. Just last night I discoverd on my main camera 1 of the IVS Tripwire grids had shifted position (I wasn't getting alerts from a single area which made me look) following a loss of power the other week. I also find the exposure settings change themselves regularly including shutter speed, compression and which sub stream is enabled. There's also what appear to be compresion artefacts / noise out of the main area, and it struggles with Wide Dynamic Range. I'm sure a lot of the picture side is down to the lens, large aperture combing with large sensor. I understand larger sensors need smaller apertures to maintain dof. Non of this means you can't get a decent picture, it just means it's not as good in my opinion as a 5442 (albeit better in very low light) for picture quality or setting stability or loss of power. Unsure what altered with the S2 but hope they resolved these issues.

Not so much...
There is new Sony Starvis 2 sensor, which can replace that used in 4k. New version supports both IR and white (old one wasn't NIR enhanced).
Big question - does Dahua will replace Color4K with new model with new sensor and new processing (like WizColor).

From my knowledge HIK canceled 1/1.2" cams in VuColor series. 8MPx version was replaced by 1/1.8" camera.

there is big risk we never will see that upgrade. New 1/1.8" 8Mpx cams are good enough...

 

[David L]

Never knew the 4kt had been revised. The original appears to have some issues incl. but not limited to DOF, focus issues and clarity compared to 5442, processing power / memory (too many things enabled on camera caused issues). It also doens't like power being withdraw and on mine at least, settings get lost or the camera itself becomes uncontactable when IP addresses reset. Just last night I discoverd on my main camera 1 of the IVS Tripwire grids had shifted position (I wasn't getting alerts from a single area which made me look) following a loss of power the other week. I also find the exposure settings change themselves regularly including shutter speed, compression and which sub stream is enabled. There's also what appear to be compresion artefacts / noise out of the main area, and it struggles with Wide Dynamic Range. I'm sure a lot of the picture side is down to the lens, large aperture combing with large sensor. I understand larger sensors need smaller apertures to maintain dof. Non of this means you can't get a decent picture, it just means it's not as good in my opinion as a 5442 (albeit better in very low light) for picture quality or setting stability or loss of power. Unsure what altered with the S2 but hope they resolved these issues.

Are they POE to a switch? I have an UPS on my switch since we have alot of power outages. Even my BI PC is on a UPS so recording continues...until UPS batteries die...

 

[CCTVCam]

No its a fixed IP on the 2nd Network card. The IP has changed ocassionally in the camera itself after the power was withdrawn. It's the 2nd one I've had like this. My other is slighly more stable but neither seems to like losing power. I'd never seen moving IVS trips wires until the other night, that's a new one for me.

They're decent cameras but ultimately I don't trust them as fully stable. I also don't like the lack of clarity, shallow dof or the pixellated background, but I'm splitting hairs here as they beat most cameras other than the 5442's for PQ quality. I'm greedy, I want DSLR / Mobile Phone picture quality so it's razor sharp, clear and I can zoom in without losing quality, at least to reasonable zoom multipliers. I have gen 1 btw.

 

[CCTVCam]

Not so much...
There is new Sony Starvis 2 sensor, which can replace that used in 4k. New version supports both IR and white (old one wasn't NIR enhanced).
Big question - does Dahua will replace Color4K with new model with new sensor and new processing (like WizColor).

From my knowledge HIK canceled 1/1.2" cams in VuColor series. 8MPx version was replaced by 1/1.8" camera.

there is big risk we never will see that upgrade. New 1/1.8" 8Mpx cams are good enough...

I think the issue for PQ is a mixture of lens, aperture and compression issues. It's welll know as you go up in sensor size, you have to go down in aperture to maintain dof. Lack of clarity is probably a combination of shallow focal point caused by large aperture and possibly quality of lens. Compression is self explanatory.

Are they POE to a switch? I have an UPS on my switch since we have alot of power outages. Even my BI PC is on a UPS so recording continues...until UPS batteries die...

They're on a POE switch mounted in my garage. Route is BI PC > POE > Cameras. I can't really justify a UPS as we hardly ever suffer power outages. We go years or decades without one. I believe this one was probaby caused by someone cutting a cable whilst doing road repairs.

 

[steve1225]

I think the issue for PQ is a mixture of lens, aperture and compression issues. It's welll know as you go up in sensor size, you have to go down in aperture to maintain dof. Lack of clarity is probably a combination of shallow focal point caused by large aperture and possibly quality of lens. Compression is self explanatory.

Those can be partially resolved. If you match F1/1.2 sensor with varifocal & P-Iris lenses (require much bigger camera body), then you can change/close aperture (to increase DOF) and move focus point depending on the needs...

Problems with processing, bad digital sharpening which increases noise, compression artifacts - those were more Full Color cam problems. Now on WizColor, this works much better.

 

[CCTVCam]

I agree Steve. Unsure if the P Iris works automatically, but it's definately the answer. In bright conditions you can have a small aperture eg f18 (if it goes that low) and in the middle of the night when there's no light f1.2. You're still going to get very little dof in the night, but at night the most important area is likely the area you are focused on. Can't capture everything and at least that's a reasonable compromise.

 

[CCTVCam]

The digital processing is terrible on Gen 1. I still believe they probably have used lots of compression for non central areas gaming graphics card style to reduce data size. The issue I have with this (in the day at least with reference to the above), is often criminal actions can happen in the background or side areas eg I have a footpath to the side. Someone could paint the wall (happened pre-cctv) or throw a brick from the side or rear of the picture damaging the protect item in the centre without ever entering the central focus area. If that happens, and these areas are heavily pixellated and cannot be zoomed into on review of the footage because of focus or high compression, then the video becomes useless.

This is a good example of the Background - Probably Compression ; - Bear in mind this is Gen 1 and not reflective necessarily of Gen 2 or 3 4Kt.

This is heavily zoomed beyond what anyone would in their right mind attempt, but what it does show is instead of blur and pixellation, the data doesn't appear to be recorded in the 1st place. The background picture looks like it's all compression interpretation and not real data with the real data probably discarded. Even unzoomed it looks like one of those art filters applied in a photo editing programme albeit a lot less extreme than when zoomed in. It is a high contrast area though which might also have an effect but surely not with data loss.

This is what I'm seeing away from the centre which suggests to me AI or the compression codec is concentrating the data rate on the centre only although even the centre of the picture never seems to zoom well for 8mp to my mind (the black bar at the top is the top of my monitor - this is a photo of the screen):

For comparison a mobile phone shot from almost the same distance of the garden to the right (cropped) (albeit this 50mp):

 

[steve1225]

I agree Steve. Unsure if the P Iris works automatically, but it's definately the answer. In bright conditions you can have a small aperture eg f18 (if it goes that low) and in the middle of the night when there's no light f1.2. You're still going to get very little dof in the night, but at night the most important area is likely the area you are focused on. Can't capture everything and at least that's a reasonable compromise.

I have a few 7442 and special premium versions of 5442H in 7442 chassis/optics.
All with f1.2 aperture. And p-iris works automatically.

Zero DOF problems at day with closed aperture. At night camera range is much smaller, so fully open p-iris is not a problem