Low-light behavior of cheap vs branded cams

[mkid]

My ZM setup had worked for awhile now, and captured footage from a cheap webcam

The area i am capturing is under the sky and its lighting varies between direct sunlight and dark cloudy day during the day, and by few 40 watt fluorescent tubes spaced far inbetween during the night, providing more than sufficient light for the people, but not for the camera....

I tried a few cheap (none costs >$10) webcams i had laying around, most of them give nothing but solid black when the sun goes down, one of them manages to get good looking bright picture

But when i looked in the footage, during the day it captures nice sharp pictures, but during the night the exposure (managed automatically by the cam) is skyrocketing so high that people walking are like semitransparent smeared shadows, and cars moving by are so transparent that they are nearly invisible and ts hard to tell apart a car and a truck.......

I am considering buying a higher grade webcam, like Logitech c170 or c270 (available in the supermarket right near me). Question is, how well would one of those deal with the low light issue ?

[patmansf]

I am considering buying a higher grade webcam, like Logitech c170 or c270 (available in the supermarket right near me). Question is, how well would one of those deal with the low light issue ?

I am using a Logitech Quickpro 9000, I think it's the predecessor to the c270.

Even with good lighting (like a cloudy day), the shutter speed is slow - individual frames of a person walking fast or a car moving are very blurry.

I don't have low-light conditions (like you with a 40 watt bulb) to compare with, just night and day lighting, but it's probably better than a cheap web cam.

And, I had problems getting the frame rate up - it was at 5FPS, now it's running at 15FPS with 800x600 resolution, but I don't know anyway to control that (see my post about low fps http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewto ... 14&t=21537 ).

I ended up unplugging and plugging the camera, and playing with monitor source settings, and suddenly the FPS was faster (as well as the hue being correct).


-- Patrick

[mkid]

Its 40w 4ft fluorescent tubes, they give nearly as much light as 200w incandescents each, but they are far inbetween and the area in front of the camera is not particularly close to any of them

How is it at "twilight" condition ? From the footage i have now, looks like the time i want to monitor most is around 5-6 am. Thats when the sky is not black but the sun is not out yet

5 FPS would be an upgrade from the 1 FPS i have now..... But as i understand FPS and shutter speed are unrelated, the camera may have fast shutter and still take time to transmit each frame...

[patmansf]

Its 40w 4ft fluorescent tubes, they give nearly as much light as 200w incandescents each, but they are far inbetween and the area in front of the camera is not particularly close to any of them

How is it at "twilight" condition ? From the footage i have now, looks like the time i want to monitor most is around 5-6 am. Thats when the sky is not black but the sun is not out yet

5 FPS would be an upgrade from the 1 FPS i have now..... But as i understand FPS and shutter speed are unrelated, the camera may have fast shutter and still take time to transmit each frame...

Here is a snapshot, sunset was at 4:46 PM, this is at 4:54PM:

http://www.aracnet.com/~patman/quickcam ... apture.jpg

The light is OK - I mean it's not just black - but the image is too blurred by movement. Of course the subject is dark, but it's still blurred such that you can barely tell what it is.

-- Patrick

[patmansf]

BTW, let us know if you do try one of those newer quickcam pros, I was thinking of getting one.

[patmansf]

And, I just noticed my quickcam pro is back down to 5 FPS again, and per my other post, no idea how to get it to a higher FPS

[mkid]

Do you know of any common branded webcams (MS, Logitech ....) that behave somewhat better than this ?

[patmansf]

Do you know of any common branded webcams (MS, Logitech ....) that behave somewhat better than this ?

Nope, please post if you find anything!

I'll probably get a c270 or similar at some point, though the behavior of zoneminder and my quickcam pro is annoying, it's still working OK

-- Patrick

[mkid]

Update :
I bought the c270. More about it when i get some footage with it and will see what its worth....

The cheap webcam it replaced got "promoted" to look at another scene, it is still connected to the same ZM box