What are the most important lessons that we’ve learnt during our years spent developing and improving CCTV lighting?
We’ve come a very long way in our understanding of what you need to make CCTV work properly at night – compared with the old days of ‘trust to luck’ or leaving lighting to somebody else. But if there’s one piece of advice for installers that stands out above all else, it is the value of testing your systems in real life conditions.
Setting up a selection of cameras, monitors and illuminators in a realistic, dark night environment really reveals the pros and cons of different kit combinations.
It also drives home the message that CCTV system designers are leaving an important element out of their systems if they don’t include dedicated lighting with every system.
But first let’s set the scene. As soon as autumn started to set-in, back in October, we began staging a series of test nights for large numbers of installers, system planners, police, consultants and customers, and we are carrying these on right through to spring. The onset of the early winter dark nights is a good opportunity to demonstrate the toughest light conditions that camera systems have to cope with.
Our test nights this year have been held in Northumberland, close to our new Wansbeck lighting test facility, and in Hampshire (the latter in association with Tavcom Training, which runs courses on CCTV lighting). Many of the CCTV industry’s leading manufacturers took part too, setting up their equipment to be tested using different types of light, including Bosch, CBC/Ganz, Dallmeier, Envisage, JVC, Optex, Panasonic, Pelco, Samsung and Videotec.
It’s important to remember that although the dark nights are more obvious in winter, cameras in fact have to deal with poor light conditions during most months of the year – it’s just that true darkness occurs later and later as we get towards summer.
But it is during those dark hours, when most people are unaware, that the risk of criminal attack rises. And that is when you want your CCTV system to really perform.
Remember, if you are lucky enough to be installing your system in the summer, when the temptation is to forget about the dark winter nights, it will only be a few months before the days grow short again and your cameras have to work in much more challenging conditions.
So if you haven’t yet had the chance to attend one of our test nights, here is a brief summary of some of the lessons learned.
No light equals no picture
The reality is that no camera can produce an effective image without light. The test night clearly demonstrated that many cameras struggled to achieve images without light. Even the most advanced cameras required dedicated lighting to produce images with the ability to detect, identify or recognise people or objects on the scene.
Match illumination to lens angle
It is critical to have the right angle of illumination, matched to the camera field of view. A narrow light on a wide angle can produce a bright spot on the screen and wide angle illumination on a narrow scene results in light wastage and reduced performance. The Raytec demonstration clearly showed this by revealing the effectiveness of Adaptive Illumination, as used in Raymax and Raylux.
Dedicated lighting is critical
Whilst ambient lighting and street lighting can provide light to the camera, it is often uneven, with poor colour rendition and long start up times, and importantly is not dedicated to the CCTV camera. As a result the images are not of the highest quality and in fact may not even be useable or fit-for-purpose. The floodlights from the test night demonstrated this, highlighting the fact that 4000W of non-directed light was less effective than 40W of directed Raylux lighting.
The importance of a quick start
Several of the cameras reacted very quickly to the quick start white light LED illumination of the Raylux products. The detail was very impressive and the reaction of the camera was instant, meaning that they can make it possible for light to be used as both a deterrent and a CCTV tool to capture accurate colour images. It can be forgotten how long it takes for many lighting systems to switch on. This can be critical to the security system. The 4,000 watts metal halide that we switched on during the night took several minutes to fully warm up, compared with the Raylux quick-start LED lighting which was instant.
Impact of windows and dome coverings
All external camera applications need to be housed in such a way as to protect them from the elements. These housings can make a difference to the night-time performance of the cameras. On the night Conway made available several different housings to demonstrate the importance of making the correct choice.
See for yourself
As we said at the beginning, there is no substitute for ‘throwing away the spec sheet’ and trying your equipment out in field conditions. This is not always possible but in reality there is no substitute for getting out there, and trying your chosen camera lens and lighting combination at night.
Many systems set up during day time conditions fail to deliver effective images at night.
Support is so crucial
Image quality is naturally important and on our various test nights attendees have witnessed images from at least 20 different cameras from a wide selection of manufacturers. Almost all the cameras had the ability to produce effective CCTV images with the correct illumination.
Many people will have judged some images to be better than others and undoubtedly one or two models may well have stood out from the crowd in either white light and infrared performance – but before you make your choice, a second critical factor comes into play: support. It is important to recognise that all the camera manufacturers represented during the test night made a big effort to prove the performance of their kit in night-time conditions.
Some manufactures also took the opportunity to test new products prior to launch. The conclusion is that many manufacturers care a great deal about the performance of their cameras and are willing to put them to the test and improve them where possible.
So in choosing your preferred camera of course performance and dedicated lighting are critical, but when it comes to working out in the field, support from the manufacturers is every bit as important.
