What our experts say...
‘Kippers and curtains’ is not an expression you hear very often these days, but loosely translated it suggests that a person or object is pretending to be rather grander than it actually is. That is precisely the impression you get when you first see the Vicon IX-3000, with its dressy silvery trim and a promising looking sliding door on the side, though the latter opens to reveal a blank panel.
However, first impressions can sometimes be misleading. Although the IX-3000 looks like a fairly ordinary general-purpose colour surveillance camera that has been tarted up to make it look a bit more interesting, it actually is quite interesting…
In fact it has a moderately well qualified day/night camera facility. This involves the use of an infrared cut filter mounted in front of the image sensor, and it swings out of the way when the camera goes into low light or ‘night’ mode. You wouldn’t know it from the outside, the box or by looking through the instruction manual, though.
The only mention of this useful hidden talent is buried deep in the specs box as ‘Auto ICR’ (IR Cut-filter Removal), that and the fact that low light sensitivity is rated at a respectable 0.1 lux. Hopefully the manual is a work in progress as it really is a poor effort, badly written, riddled with spelling and grammatical mistakes and what looks like hand-drawn illustrations, complete with errors.
But back to the specs. The camera is based around a 1/3-inch Super HAD CCD sensor with a 752 x 582 pixel sensor matrix, giving a claimed resolution of 550 lines. Most of the image processing and exposure functions are automated but there are a few manual overrides, including Flickerless mode, switchable AGC and Backlight Control.
It can be used with both C and CS type lenses (an adaptor ring is supplied) and they can be manual, fixed or auto iris (Video or DC controlled) types. Two versions of the camera are available; models with an H suffix are powered by 230VAC, whilst the L version, which we are looking at here, requires a 12VDC or 24VAC supply. (A black and white model is also available).
The camera is housed in an oddly contoured ‘cylindrical’ case made from a lightweight alloy, measuring roughly 125 x 65mm. The strange shape probably has a technical name but the easiest way to describe it is to think of a tin can that has been squashed almost flat on three sides. A pair of silver shell-like trim panels adorn the outside of the camera and as far as we could see they are purely for show and serve no practical purpose, though like the rest of the camera they’re good news for manufacturers of small screws. The IX 3000 is held together by no less than 22 screws (rather more if you count those used on internal sub-assemblies), which must be some sort of record for a small camera.
At the front is the mounting collar for the lens. This has a simple-looking back-focus adjustment in the shape of a large thumbwheel that’s locked in position with a hair-thin Allen key; we’ll come back to this feature in a moment.
On the left side of the camera body is the square four-pin socket for an auto iris lens. This is next to the aforementioned sliding door; presumably on another model somewhere in the range it conceals a set of controls. This camera’s controls, such as they are, all live on the back panel and consist of a three-way miniature DIP switch for selecting Flickerless mode, AGC and Backlight functions. There is also a three-way sliding switch for DC/Video or Auto shutter iris control and a recessed preset trimmer for setting DC auto iris level.
The only other items of note are a three-way screw terminal for the power connection (the third, unused terminal is mysteriously labelled ‘FG’). Video output is handled by a BNC socket. The instructions suggest that there is a power on indicator on the back panel but this seems to have been forgotten on our review sample.
Opening up the case is a lengthy procedure due to the sheer number of screws involved (18 in total…). Inside there are three circuit modules, the camera board and ICR assembly are attached to the front panel, the power supply PCB is mounted behind that on a pair of pillars and the third board, which contains the controls and connections is on the rear panel.
The boards are connected together by a very untidy looking collection of cables, a classic ‘explosion in a spaghetti factory’ type setup, but it all looks fairly well put together and it passed our shock and intermittency tests without any problems.
Setup and operation
The only real problem concerns lens back focus adjustment. The silver trim panels only just escape blocking access to the microscopic Allen screws that lock the collar in position. The dark gunmetal grey makes it very hard to find the screw heads, and this can be a real swine of a job in poorly lit surroundings.
However, the worst is yet to come; the tiny Allen key supplied with our sample wasn’t even the right size, it was too small. This took some time to sink in – it would have taken us even longer to figure it out if we’d been teetering at the top of a ladder… More time was wasted finding one that would fit; it was lucky that we had one to hand. It is worth stating again that these are seriously small tools, the correct Allen key for this camera
measures just 0.75mm across and probably not the sort of thing you’ll find in the average installer’s tool kit, and even if you have one it will probably got lost…
Fortunately that’s as bad as it gets and apart from the preliminaries involved in attaching and configuring an auto-iris lens, and selecting the appropriate AGC and Backlight settings, the IX-3000 is otherwise more or less ready to go straight out of the box.
Performance
General image quality is very good; the manufacturer’s resolution figure seems a shade optimistic but in good daylight our sample delivered a healthy 500 plus lines, producing a clear, sharp image, packed with plenty of fine detail and very little noise. Colours look natural and well defined and the auto white balance system gives a good account of itself under mixed natural/artificial and fluorescent lighting.
Falling light levels result in a small and steady increase in noise, the exposure system responds smoothly to changing light levels. The Day/Night function kicks in quite early, gradually reducing saturation until the picture is in black and white.
The switchable IR filter takes a little longer to engage and when it does there is a momentary flash on the screen followed by an increase in brightness and a reduction in noise levels.
Low light sensitivity is not as good as some of the full-spec day/night cameras we’ve seen recently but it will certainly produce a potentially useable image as long as there is some light at the scene.
Our sample had two faulty ‘hot’ (always on) pixels, however, they were not close to the centre of the screen or intrusive in normal light, only showing up at very low light levels.