HowToSurveillance Blog

Several years ago, I spoke to a police officer who responded to a vandalism complaint in our neighborhood . I told him that I was thinking about installing some security cameras due to the rash of vandalism at that time (this obviously was before I installed my video surveillance system). One of the comments that he made was “if you’re going to get a security camera system, then make sure you have adequate lighting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen security camera footage that turned out to be useless because of poor lighting”. I can’t emphasize how important that statement is – you have to have adequate and proper lighting to get good quality video evidence. There are basically two broad types of lighting for security cameras: visible light (~400-700 nm) and infra-red (usually 850 nm range). Fortunately, many security cameras have built-in infra-red (IR) emitters. The problem is, not all of them perform equally well. Pick a reliable supplier and stick with their products. If you’re looking for quality cameras with IR, let us know.

Without sufficient light, the camera circuitry is going to struggle to render an image, and this results in a noisy, grainy image that will be of limited use. So do it right, and make sure the lighting is good!

IR light will provide only black and white video at night. If you want color video at night, you’ll need visible light such as a flood lights that are motion sensor activated.