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Question About Exterior Lighting Types And CCTV

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Timothy Howell
Nov 09, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Good morning.  I have a question about exterior lighting used with CCTV systems.  There are numerous types of lighting such as metal halide, low and high pressure sodium lighting and mercury vapor to name a few.  Each of these different types of lights have slightly different color spectrums with LPS being more yellow and MH being more toward the blue end of the spectrum.  My question to the group is with these slightly different hues of color has anyone noticed any impacts on video image quality on low light cameras?  I understand full night vision does not include color and the image quality is a function of intensity among other variables.  Have you noticed any differences just after dusk or before dawn?  Thoughts?

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Ethan Ace
Nov 09, 2016

Hey Tim, we have tests of a few different light types in our Camera Color Fidelity Shootout.

It definitely can impact color fidelity, especially sodium lighting. That being said, the question is how much color fidelity you actually need for practical identification. It's one thing if a green looks blue or yellow looks brown, but that's very rare. Instead, it's generally an issue of shade. Blue generally looks blue and red generally looks red, etc.

So if you need to give a description of "blue car", most lighting types will get you close enough. Low pressure sodium might give you some issue with some cameras, but I wouldn't expect others.

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Timothy Howell
Nov 09, 2016
IPVMU Certified

Thanks very much Ethan

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