Q : Are Cameras Affected by Light Levels
Similar to photography, the choice of light levels for a spy cam is very important. Always try to give a camera more light than the recommemded minimum. Cameras have difficulty when there is insufficient light but very rarely suffer from too much light. A good spy camera will be able to operate effectively in light up to 10 times the recommended minimum.
Black and white (monochrome) cameras will operate in low levels of light (0.05 Lux) Colour cameras will require more light. Colour cameras will normally switch to monochrome mode at night time.
To help you judge the lighting levels required we have outlined the standard lighting levels below
Full Summer Daylight : 50,000 lux
Cloudy Daylight : 10,000 lux
Indoor OfficeLighting : 500 lux
Early Morning : 1 -10 lux
Main StreetLighting : 30 Lux
Side Street Lighting : 0.5 - 3 Lux
The lower the lux value is, the less light is required by the camera to record.
Q Is there a difference between day and night time cameras
Spy cameras with Led's allow cameras to take high quality night time pictures. The quality of the night time images are dependant on the number of LED lights.
Q : What does camera resolution mean ?
Camera resolution refers to the quality of pictures. Technically, the resolution depends on the number of pixels and bandwidth. A standard cameras usually has resolution of 330 TV lines with the higher spec cameras deploying resolution of 400 lines. More resolution means more quality and typically costs more money.
An average resolution for a colour camera is 300 to 400 lines of horizontal resolution and for clack and white cameras 500 to 700 lines of resolution.
Q : How can you view pictures from more than one camera.
There are a number of methods which can be used to display multiple spy cam pictures
Switchers
Switchers provide true realtime pictures of high quality. Basically it is a devive or unit that changes from picture to picture one at a time. Switches only record one picture at a time but this is offset by the fact that picture quality is high.
Quads
Quad Processors allow four different pictures to be displayed on a screen at the same time. When recording four pictures the resolution of the images suffer. It is also possible to record only one camera at full resolution.
Multiplexers
Multiplexers allow the simultaneous recording of images from multiple cameras onto one VCR tape. Multiplexers should be used when high quality pictures from more than one camera is required. Because of the additional functionality multiplexers are more expensive than quads or switchers and do not record in real time.
Technically a multiplexer feeds the images onto the VCR otherwise the VCR would not be able to handle all the pictures and synchronise them. It is because of this that pictures are not recorded on the VCR in real time.
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