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Author Topic: low light camera Vs night vision  (Read 3107 times)

X10_USER

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low light camera Vs night vision
« on: October 24, 2011, 08:47:41 AM »

Just like to get the opinion from other users on low light camera vs night vision. I plan to use one at my door and one in my baby's room. The front door has a street light from the city and the baby's room has the LED night light with photo sensor. I feel more or less the same intensity when standing in front of my door or standing in my baby's room with only the LED night light on. Will the low light camera provide acceptable picture or should I go with night vision which I think has infra red light build in. I know that the best is go with night vision but I have limited budget.
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Noam

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Re: low light camera Vs night vision
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2011, 09:04:13 AM »

I can only tell you about my experience.
About 7 years ago, I bought two of the "low light" NiteWatch cameras from X10, with the intent to use one as a baby-cam (I didn't have a specific purpose for the second one at the time, but it was a "buy one, get one free" deal). 
It worked great during the day, but it was completely useless at night.
We had a lamp in the room, which had a 25-watt bulb in it. I used a Lamp Module to dim the lamp down to around 35%, so there was enough light to see if we had to change a diaper in the middle of the night, but not enough light to disturb the baby's sleep. It works great as a night light, and we didn't have to turn on the overhead light with the three 60-watt bulbs in the middle of the night.
With the "low light" camera, that wasn't anywhere near enough light, even though I could see just fine with even less light in the room. I played around with increasing the brightness of the lamp, and found that I had to go almost all the way up to 100% before I could see anything useful in the picture. Since the 25 watt bulb at nearly 100% was way too bright, I wasn't able to use the X10 wireless camera for that application. The other problem I had was that rotating the camera on the Ninja base caused the antenna to move (since it is attached to the camera and not the base), and the signal would get much weaker.

I found a wired "night vision" camera at Home Depot for about $50. It was a pain to fish the wires down to the basement, but it has worked flawlessly for years now (the baby is no longer a baby, but has younger siblings ;-). The camera has 6 IR LEDs around the lens, and works even in complete darkness, where I can't see a thing with the naked eye.

At the time, they also had a 2 or 4 camera wireless system at Home Depot, which also had night vision capabilities. I don't remember who makes it, or if they still have the same ones there, but it might be worth looking into.
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X10_USER

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Re: low light camera Vs night vision
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2011, 11:33:40 PM »

Thanks a lot for the reply. I'll go with the night vision.
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luke03

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Re: low light camera Vs night vision
« Reply #3 on: October 26, 2011, 06:03:19 PM »

many of those "night vision" camera actually is not much different from low light one, but using UV or IR LED to be the light source.  Even you don't see the light, it is lighted.  One way to check that out is to look through your cell phone camera.  Those cell phone camera don't have UV or IR filter can see those light human eye can no see.
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Noam

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Re: low light camera Vs night vision
« Reply #4 on: October 26, 2011, 11:04:07 PM »

When I tested the "Low Light" camera a few years ago, I tried using the IR light on my camcorder to illuminate the baby's crib. I verified (using the Camcorder's viewfinder) that the IR light was really on. However, it made no difference to the "Low Light" camera.
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