Help Me Choose A Camera For A Store

There are a number of products that may work. I just bought a Honeywell 4 channel recorder for covert video. Look for a camera that has Wide Dynamic Range to account for the changes in lighting.

Doing a quick calculation at ~200' with the Theia Lens Calculator, you are going to need a 1080p low light box-style camera with an aftermarket 15-50mm varifocal lens to get the 60ppf for identification as requested. A suggestion would be the Bosch NBN-932V that we reviewed in January with a Fujinon or similar 3MP 15-50mm lens. I was going to suggest the Axis P13 series, but they do not offer the low-light Lightfinder option in any higher resolution than 720p.

Undisclosed,

You list the desires that many end users have: long range to target, desire to identify anywhere within that range, and limited bandwidth/storage. Here's the short answer from my perspective...

If you need to identify at a long range and at a short range with the same camera you are looking at a very high megapixel camera. If you go with high megapixel you are looking at high bit rates and thus high storage cost. The military came up with an acronym, DCRI, which essentially explains how to pick a camera lens based on the desired image capture result.

My advice is to meet with a few local manufacturer partners directly or with an integrator and do a demo of what you can see at 20' vs 200' with the same camera. They'll be glad to help, particularly if you have many retail stores to cover with cameras. John mentioned Bosch below (I'm a Bosch rep on the east coast) which is great, but you really should get a demo in order to set reasonable expectations for your system.

For more on DCRI, click here and select the last link on the page: http://midches.com/resources/downloads-technical-support/help-by-category/camera-systems/cctv-basics/

Best of luck,

Matt