IP cameras have a bad reputation of working poorly in low light conditions. It's part of a greater problem with all surveillance cameras - as critical as low light performance is to video surveillance, high quality low light performance can be difficult to achieve.

There's no way to get this from manufacturers as they provide cryptic (and often overstated) illumination statistics. Plus, they usually provide still images that mislead more than inform.

Over the last two months of IP camera testing, the importance of measuring and understanding tradeoffs of camera settings has become clear.

As we examined in our report on lux meters, measuring light levels is crucial. Image quality degrades over a range of light levels (almost always higher than what the manufacturer states). You need to determine what those light levels are and how bad the image quality becomes at each light level.

Secondly, significant video quality tradeoffs exist in manufacturer's low light optimizations. These functions can distort moving objects, introduce significant artifacts and change the appearances of objects.

This premium report digs into these elements, explaining and sharing actual video samples that demonstrate these issues over a wide range of light levels.