Auxiliary CCTV lighting - IR LED illuminators

Educational - Read full description!
This is a video in Axis Communications' Academy Fundamentals educational series. In this video, we have locked the camera in night mode and enhanced the available building lights and ambient moonlight with an AXIS T90A32 IR-LED 850 nm semi-covert illuminator. The LED lamp has an area of coverage from 30 to 60 degrees with a reach of 80 to 53 meters (262 to 173 feet)

As you can see in the video, the illuminator has been set to a wide angle to provide coverage across the entire scene, all while keeping light levels from overexposing the person entering the detection zone close to the camera.
With illuminator at facial height, the IR lamp still makes the persons face a bit washed out in the last second of his appearance.

However, this is not a problem as adequate identification is possible. Placing the IR illuminator higher than the camera, further away from the person would reduce the problem. The video shows the importance of testing in realistic scenarios, as the first part of the video without anyone in the scene looks perfect.

Note that without the snow, the impact of the IR lamp on the scene would have been even greater, as the snow reflects the building lights as well as the moon light.

In other videos in this series, you can see the same scene
With ambient light in color for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfT6NWIZtpY
With ambient light in b/w for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO8YLTTLDnM
With white light LED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ysDbb5LxI
With too powerful white light LED: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doqjv03FPTE
With too powerful IR light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8MK8s5JAfQ
Finally the same scene filmed with a thermal camera http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsQ-bB2wZME

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Axis
• Communications
• Academy
• training
• P1344
• IP
• Video
• surveillance
• camera
• bad
• low
• light
• IR-LED
• Raytec
• CCTV
• Illumination
• semi-covert
• white
• LED