When looking for surveillance camera systems, people can easily get overwhelmed by the readily available products and the confusing technical terms that come with this industry. People can walk into big box retailers, and there are tons of brands that sell the exact same camera systems.
Most brands claim to offer high resolution, night vision, as well as sorting to different claims that usually could be clearer to individuals with no prior knowledge or experience when it comes to home security systems. Most individuals need to realize that there’s another type of surveillance cam that is directly available in the market today, though they are not found in warehouses or big box stores.
These cams are classified as commercial-grade surveillance cameras and are the kind of cams used by big box chains to help them secure their products or inventories. People should check out the ceiling of electronic stores, as well as warehouse chains, and they will notice in every aisle white dome cams that are larger than the average consumer. These firms don’t even use the kind of cameras they are selling to consumers, and there’s an excellent reason for this.
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Consumer-grade versus commercial-grade visual image recording device
As readers just learned, there are two categories of surveillance cams. Individuals usually find consumer-grade devices at shops, which usually come with eight to sixteen cams bundled with video recorders and sell for less than $1,000 for one set.
Another type is the commercial-grade ones that usually start at $400 per device – a higher price compared to its counterpart. Video recorders need to be bought separately, and commercial-grade video recorders start at around $500. They can range up to $6,000 depending on the device’s storage capacity, image processing features, as well as camera connectivity.
Quality
On the surface, both device categories may appear the same, although if individuals were able to see what is inside, the differences become pretty distinct and obvious. Commercial-grade devices are designed and built to be used in high-performance applications where the result is vital, and failure isn’t an option.
On the other hand, consumer-grade devices are not. Usually, these things are built to work very well when there’s a lot of available light, and once the light becomes absent or low (during nighttime), their quality will start to show. Commercial devices outperform their cheaper counterpart since they have bigger internal video sensors, as well as higher-quality parts that can capture and adapt an excellent video in low-light settings.
Look at it this way, if decent still-cams cost $200 or less, how can a more sophisticated device be sold for lower than that? It just needs to add up. To offer a lower price, manufacturers need to cut corners. The end result would be to compromise the device’s performance.
What good is a security system that only works in perfect conditions in light environments with bright lights? Consumer-grade systems can work pretty well in certain situations, like nanny cameras or checking in on pets, though when looking to gather pieces of evidence of crimes, they usually come up short.
Mixed lighting conditions
Commercial-grade home security systems prove their superiority when it comes to dealing with difficult lighting conditions. For instance, it is pretty common for businesses to have cams pointed at the property’s front door. When people open the front door, a lot of sunlight will shine through the doorway. It will flood the device’s sensor. These systems will adapt to the additional light in the area and will open the shutter to help compensate.
In turn, it causes the door to look exposed, though the property now appears dark since the room in which the device is mounted is a lot darker compared to the area of the property doorway. In these instances, the property owner ends up having an exposed doorway but with indoor images that are too dark to be usable.
Meanwhile, people’s faces walking into the property is never captured since they are standing in an under-exposed area. Though the example given is for shops, houses usually also have challenging mixed lighting conditions. These cameras solve the issue with special light-handling capabilities. These systems use both hardware and software solutions called High Dynamic Range or HDR. High Dynamic Range takes an exposure to the area and an exposure to the door and combines the two pictures together to create properly-exposed composite images of the two areas of the property.
Images taken will look completely normal since the room and doorway will have the same brightness level. Because of this, people’s faces are appropriately exposed at the doorway and in the entire property, accomplishing the goal of taking videos of individuals entering the shop.
High Dynamic Range is now a standard feature in all commercial cams. The bad news is that once consumers realize that a cheaper consumer device they purchased lacks High Dynamic Range capability, it is usually too late since the records and cams are already installed.
Night vision
Now let’s talk about why consumer-grade devices usually have poor night vision capabilities. When these things try to see in environments with poor lighting conditions, they need light sources to help illuminate the area it is capturing. The bad news is night vision illuminators that come with consumer cams are designed to capture short-range images only and have fixed brightness.
It means they usually over-expose what is nearer, causing individuals, as well as objects, to appear a bit blown out and without details. It will have a hard time identifying bad guys. But these devices usually are equipped with advanced night vision infrared illuminators that can automatically adjust their brightness to the scene.
This capability is called Smart Infrared, and it matches the device’s IR light output to the environment. With Smart Infrared, people and objects appear adequately exposed and in clear, complete details. If cameras can’t deliver or capture properly-exposed and sharp images at night or during the day, it means it has limited capabilities and usefulness.
