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Outdoor camera recommendations

edited October 2016 in Cameras
Hi all,

I'm looking for recommendations for one or two outdoor cameras. My main use case is this:
- Mounted on outside of garage, with a view of vehicles and the alley.
- Here is a photo of the vantage point (taken on my iPhone) https://goo.gl/photos/Kbaof3W2V1kK7Zt76
- This is looking southeast, so the sun may be in the frame for part of the day
- There is a street light at the top-right of the frame

Some features I am looking for:
- Power over Ethernet
- At least 2 megapixels
- Works with SecuritySpy (obviously). I'm pretty tech-savvy, so it doesn't have to be especially user friendly
- Good image quality
- Construction quality / durability

I'm honestly not sure about dome versus bullet cam.. currently I have some D-Link cameras because they were readily accessible. I've looked the Dahua website but the number of models is overwhelming. Budget? I was hoping to stay under US$200 but that's not as important. Thanks in advance for your help.

Comments

  • Given the height from the ground I would personally think a dome would be better, less chance of someone taking a swing at it and causing damage.

    Wide angle lens would give you a better view across the entire parking space and vehicles - caveat would be a loss in quality, probably marginal but I'm sure others are far better at advising in this space.

    One of my cameras is a Hikvision DS-2CD3145F-I which is PoE, 4MP (I run it at 1080), and has a 2.8mm lens so gives a wider angle which covers my front yard pretty nicely. Its pretty solid metal dome construction and I think it provides pretty good quality overall, I get some pretty harsh sun in part of the image with a lot in shadow from the house, copes well with it. I have Digital WDR enabled which helps. Personally I prefer my Hikvisions over my Dahuas, your mileage may vary.

    Is that a sensor light to the left of the picture? If it is then you will need to take that into consideration, as depending on the light sensitivity of the camera/settings it could force the camera to switch from IR/night mode to daytime mode, which could result in a momentary loss of coverage. Worth considering.

  • Thanks, Ryan!
  • Good advice from Ryan.

    Dahua and Hikvision both have plenty of outdoor models (both dome and bullet) with resolutions around 2 MP. Mount the camera as high as possible - ideally you don't want the sun to be able to shine directly into the camera. As Ryan said, a wide-angle lens (2.8mm) looks like the best option.
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