Which of these two Dahua cameras will deliver better light capture in night conditions?

[Robertomcat]

Hello, good afternoon.

I have a doubt when it comes to choosing a camera from all the ones I have already discarded, but of these last two I have left to choose from, I would like to know which of the two receives a better image in low light conditions in colour mode.

The two models are from Dahua, and after looking at Hikvision models, these are the ones I like the most. Which of these two configurations would be ideal for my question? Thank you.

 

[Dan]

Hi @Robertomcat

We have no experience with these particular Dahua cameras and so we don't know what other image settings/improvements they offer, but purely from the technical specs provided, we would expect the PTZ85448-HNF-PA model to give the best low light performance as it has the larger image sensor (1/1.2" is larger than 1/1.8").

But there are other settings like aperture, shutter speed/exposure, and more that can also impact image quality in low light.

 

[Robertomcat]

Hi @Robertomcat

We have no experience with these particular Dahua cameras and so we don't know what other image settings/improvements they offer, but purely from the technical specs provided, we would expect the PTZ85448-HNF-PA model to give the best low light performance as it has the larger image sensor (1/1.2" is larger than 1/1.8").

But there are other settings like aperture, shutter speed/exposure, and more that can also impact image quality in low light.

Thank you very much for your explanation Dan. What I didn't tell you in the original post is that I was referring to light capture in colour mode, before switching to night mode in B/W, because the conditions are different.

 

[Dan]

No worries @Robertomcat

I understood that you were talking about colour mode, my explanation is still the same.

The important thing to point out is that you shouldn't take LUX levels seriously, LUX levels are not standardised which means that each manufacturer can set what they think is the lowest light level that their camera can achieve an image (e.g. although that first camera says it can achieve a colour image at 0.001 LUX this could just mean that the camera can detect the pixels changing or an outline of an object just about being visible, but the image would still be way too dark for any identifiable detail).

 

[Robertomcat]

No worries @Robertomcat

I understood that you were talking about colour mode, my explanation is still the same.

The important thing to point out is that you shouldn't take LUX levels seriously, LUX levels are not standardised which means that each manufacturer can set what they think is the lowest light level that their camera can achieve an image (e.g. although that first camera says it can achieve a colour image at 0.001 LUX this could just mean that the camera can detect the pixels changing or an outline of an object just about being visible, but the image would still be way too dark for any identifiable detail).

Perfect, everything has been well explained. Thank you very much!

I understand that a 2 Mpx camera, with the same hardware configuration as the 4 Mpx one I have put in the screenshot, will get twice as much light as the 4 Mpx one, right?

 

[Dan]

If all other image settings are the same then technically yes the 2MP can capture more light, but it is still a balancing act because although you might see a brighter image the resolution will still be lower because of the smaller number of pixels that make up the 2MP image being stretched over a similar area to the 4MP image and that means each pixel is covering a larger area & capturing less detail.