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Camera types, placement, image quality and detection capabilities explained by installers.
27 articles
Position the camera where people naturally face it as they approach or pause. Keep the viewing angle shallow, choose a lens that makes the face large enough in recorded footage, and test the result in daylight and darkness. Backlight, glare, infrared reflection and motion blur must be checked at the actual entrance, gate or counter.
Place stair cameras where they record people approaching across landings and level changes. Favour a diagonal view over a steep top-down angle, account for railings and floor edges, control backlighting and infrared reflections, and test every route in the recorded image before fixing the mount.
Position the light near the camera’s viewing direction but outside its frame. Aim it evenly across the subject area, with a slight side offset where practical. Avoid backlighting, direct glare, bright reflections and nearby surfaces that bounce infrared into the lens.
Mount the camera on a fixed surface outside the full travel path of every door, gate and shutter, then test the view throughout each complete movement cycle.
Choose a video doorbell when speaking with visitors is the main task. Choose a fixed camera when flexible framing, entrance observation and recording matter more. Use both when conversation at the door and a wider view of the approach are separate needs.
Set the shutter for the moving detail the scene requires, then use only enough gain to support that exposure and keep noise reduction conservative. A bright image is not necessarily a useful one: recorded movement, rather than a clean live preview, should decide the final settings.
A larger image sensor generally offers more low-light potential, but useful night detail depends on pixel density, lens aperture, exposure, illumination and placement working together. Compare recorded video of moving subjects in a scene similar to yours, not only bright daytime footage or a paused night frame.
Mount a security camera high enough to provide a stable overview, but low and level enough to show the required detail where people actually pass. Aim along the approach path, not steeply down onto it, and test the view in real light before fixing the mount.
Choose object detection when you want selective alerts for people or vehicles. Keep pixel motion detection where broad activity recording is useful, and test both under the actual lighting and viewing conditions.
A camera’s near blind zone depends on two separate limits: how closely the lens can focus and where the mounting geometry allows the camera to see. Plan the nearest point that needs usable detail, then verify it in the installed scene under daytime and night conditions.
Security camera depth of field determines how much of a scene, from foreground to background, appears acceptably sharp. Focus should be set around the area where useful recorded detail matters most, then checked separately in daylight and darkness.
Wide-angle lenses lose useful edge detail because they spread a broad scene across the image sensor, often with added softness and distortion near the boundaries. Important subjects should pass near the frame centre. If one view must show the whole area, a separate camera may be needed for identification detail.
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