What our experts say …
LG’s high-profile consumer arm manufactures everything from robot vacuum cleaners to eye-boggling 76-inch plasma screen TVs, so building a humble day/night colour surveillance camera should be a cinch…
The LVC-SX811HP gets off to quite a reasonable start. It’s based around a 1/3-inch Super HAD CCD image sensor with 440k effective pixels and a claimed resolution of 520 lines. Low light sensitivity in colour mode is 0.4 lux and in night mode, with the IR cut filter out of the way, it drops to a fairly modest 0.1lux.
To be fair it isn’t billed as a low light camera and the recommended standard illumination level is 2000 lux, but the inclusion of the day/night function does seem to suggest that it can cope with a wider than normal range of lighting conditions.
Don’t let the fact that LG produced the world’s first refrigerator with Internet connectivity fool you into thinking the SX811 has any unusual or unexpected talents. It doesn’t. It is a basic, no-frills design. The sales literature has its work cut out trying to make the main features sound enticing but it fails dismally as they include such things as a CS lens mount, 24 volt AC/12 volt DC power supply, auto while balance, switchable AGC and backlight control, flickerless shutter speed option and line-lock external sync (when powered by a 24 volt AC supply), and that really is it.
What the specification lacks in excitement it makes up for with some sharp styling and cosmetics. At the front of the compact two-tone case there’s a threaded collar for the lens and behind that a slot with a simple thumbwheel for the back-focus adjustment. A mounting plate with a standard 1/4-inch thread can be fixed to the top or the bottom of the case.
The back panel is quite busy with a red power-on LED in the top left corner. Beneath that is a five-way spring terminal for AC/DC supply (DC is non polarised) and remote day/night switching. To the right of that is a three-way slide switch for selecting auto iris mode (DC, Video or electronic control), a standard four-pin socket for an auto iris lens and two recessed adjustments for setting DC iris level and line-lock phase. Beneath the terminal block is a BNC socket carrying the video output and a five-way DIP switch for selecting white balance mode (auto/hold), AGC (on/off), Backlight Control (on/off), Flickerless mode and sync (line-lock/internal).
The front end of the case is made from cast alloy; this houses an unusually complex infrared filter switchover mechanism for day/night operation. The filter is mounted on a rail and moved from side to side by a threaded rod, driven by a tiny motor. It’s a very neat piece of engineering but somewhat slow, and quite noisy, compared with the magnetic actuator systems used on most other day/night cameras .
Back to the case and the centre section comprises two steel shells; only the end cap is plastic. Inside there’s more steelwork in the shape of a box-like chassis, which supports a single densely populated PCB.
Presumably the space beneath the circuit board is occupied by a mains power supply and additional circuitry on other models in the range. The standard of materials and construction looks very good; it’s not a weatherproof design but it shouldn’t have problems operating in mildly hostile environments.
Setup and operation
Once the lens has been fitted and the video and power supply cables attached it’s more or less ready to go. The back-focus thumbwheel has a recessed locking screw and this has to be slackened off before any adjustments can be made. The only other actions that need to be taken are whether or not to enable AGC or backlight compensation and automatic of fixed white balance.
Performance
Resolution is more or less as advertised and in good natural light the image is very clean and detailed, but the picture on our sample was a little dull. This was nothing that a tweak of the camera’s brightness and contrast settings wouldn’t put right, except that there aren’t any. This shifts the responsibility on to the display device, which isn’t necessarily a problem with a single camera, but with a multi-camera installation the darkish picture could be a nuisance.
The auto exposure systems handle moderate changes in lighting levels reasonably quickly and colour accuracy is very good, even in the normally difficult mixture of tube and natural light. However, the camera’s rather ordinary low-light characteristics are nothing to write home about and could prove to be a limitation in situations where light levels cannot be maintained.
Day/night switching is rather sedate. It would have been useful to have some sort of manual adjustment to change the switch-over point; it does have the option to remotely switch the function, though we can’t see this being used on many installations.
As expected the camera is largely immune to shock and vibration and the picture never flinched whilst on the receiving end of a light pounding from the Security Installer rubber mallet.
What the manufacturer says …
Genie CCTV, the official UK and Ireland distributor for LG Electronic Security Products, says the new LG LVC-SX811HP Day/Night high resolution bodied camera offers a leap forward in camera technology and delivers a range of advanced features.
Housed in a stylish two-tone Graphite Grey and Silver casing that complements any installation location, the LG LVC-SX811HP is fitted with a Sony 1/3 inch colour super HAD CCD image sensor.
The camera is suitable for use in a wide range of CCTV applications and designed to provide clean, noiseless and reliable pictures. Features include: Intelligent IR Cut Filter, External Control Feature on IR Cut Filter, Digital Signal Process (DSP), Auto Gain Control (AGC), Auto White Balance (AWB), CS Mount (C mount using adaptor ring), Electronic Sensitivity (ES), Back Light Compensation (BLC), IR Cut Filter Control – Auto/Manual/External and Iris Control DC/ELC/Video.
The LG LVC-SX811HP has a resolution of 520 TV lines – producing high quality colour images during the day and switching to monochrome when light fades – and is capable of operating in lighting conditions down to 0.4 Lux (Colour) 0.01 Lux (B/W). Power supply requirements are easily taken care off with auto sensing of either DC 12v or AC24v enabling quick and easy installation in a wide range of environments.
