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Someone with knowledge of cameras please either correct or endorse this, but I think the largest price/quality tradeoff in any camera happens at the lens choice

Someone with knowledge of cameras please either correct or endorse this, but I think the largest price/quality tradeoff in any camera happens at the lens choice, and given a cheap lens, the stills can't be much better than the video.

securingsincity 14y ago
certainly the lens and sensor are the biggest trade offs with price these would have the biggest impact with image clarity and the amount of light taken in to take the image.
tripzilch 14y ago
I think that is right (I can't claim much specific knowledge on camera lenses though), it used to be especially bad with the whole "megapixel wars" a few years back. Pixel resolution increased, but image clarity didn't, and you would get much better images on old low-megapixel cameras with relatively high-end lenses than with a cheap but new camera of approx 4-8x the resolution in pixels. However, nowadays I am quite amazed by the picture quality of the average smartphone camera. So maybe something changed? Still, we're talking about better lenses/quality than smartphone photos. They may be sharp, but that comes from the advantage of being up close and coming in huge numbers. And in addition to the lens, there's a lot of other expensive parts in a security system, that may need to be replaced or reconfigured because it is all integrated with the current low-res cameras. The bigger such a system is, the more expensive it becomes to change it all up when better tech has come around, even if the new parts are relatively cheap by themselves.
brk 14y ago
Not exactly. A lot of it has to do with the fact that most security cameras are not setup for capture of facial details (or license plates for that matter). Most security cameras are setup for general overview shots, with around 10-20ppf (pixels per foot), whereas good detail starts at around 80ppf (meaning that you'd need 4x as many cameras in most areas to start to get something approaching an image quality that you could use for reliable facial recognition. On top of that there is the storage factor. A "common" camera in a new deployment is a 1080p (2.1 Megapixel) camera. If this is set to record good quality images 24/7, it consumes about 60GB of storage per day. Various tricks like "record on motion", etc. can reduce this to maybe 10GB/day, at the risk of potentially missing key evidence or having gaps in the recording. Lenses are important, but it's not that hard to find a lens with sufficient resolution for these cameras. A good lens rated at 2+ megapixels is around $70-$120 (depending on various factors), and a good outdoor camera (including lens) can be had for $500-$1200. Big price ranges, yes, but not to the point that the lenses are the limiting factor budget-wise.

securingsincity 14y ago

certainly the lens and sensor are the biggest trade offs with price these would have the biggest impact with image clarity and the amount of light taken in to take the image.

tripzilch 14y ago

I think that is right (I can't claim much specific knowledge on camera lenses though), it used to be especially bad with the whole "megapixel wars" a few years back. Pixel resolution increased, but image clarity didn't, and you would get much better images on old low-megapixel cameras with relatively high-end lenses than with a cheap but new camera of approx 4-8x the resolution in pixels. However, nowadays I am quite amazed by the picture quality of the average smartphone camera. So maybe something changed? Still, we're talking about better lenses/quality than smartphone photos. They may be sharp, but that comes from the advantage of being up close and coming in huge numbers. And in addition to the lens, there's a lot of other expensive parts in a security system, that may need to be replaced or reconfigured because it is all integrated with the current low-res cameras. The bigger such a system is, the more expensive it becomes to change it all up when better tech has come around, even if the new parts are relatively cheap by themselves.

brk 14y ago

Not exactly. A lot of it has to do with the fact that most security cameras are not setup for capture of facial details (or license plates for that matter). Most security cameras are setup for general overview shots, with around 10-20ppf (pixels per foot), whereas good detail starts at around 80ppf (meaning that you'd need 4x as many cameras in most areas to start to get something approaching an image quality that you could use for reliable facial recognition. On top of that there is the storage factor. A "common" camera in a new deployment is a 1080p (2.1 Megapixel) camera. If this is set to record good quality images 24/7, it consumes about 60GB of storage per day. Various tricks like "record on motion", etc. can reduce this to maybe 10GB/day, at the risk of potentially missing key evidence or having gaps in the recording. Lenses are important, but it's not that hard to find a lens with sufficient resolution for these cameras. A good lens rated at 2+ megapixels is around $70-$120 (depending on various factors), and a good outdoor camera (including lens) can be had for $500-$1200. Big price ranges, yes, but not to the point that the lenses are the limiting factor budget-wise.