The days may be getting longer as Summer approaches, but it should be remembered that at some point every single night throughout the year, it will get dark. A low light image capture capability is therefore extremely important when a site needs 24/7 protection.
Demand for effective low light cameras continues to grow, partly driven by economic factors in that users do not want to incur the capital and running costs of installing wide-area supplementary lighting to make CCTV effective in night time conditions.
Key Features:
Day/Night capability
The vast majority of Samsung cameras feature either true day/night capability, with a built-in IR cut filter, or software day/night functionality to give the desired level of low light video capture, depending on the user’s requirements and budget.
Samsung Super Noise Reduction
Samsung Super Noise Reduction (SSNRIII), is designed specifically to reduce image noise in low light conditions without creating ghosting or image blur. Samsung cameras equipped with SSNRIII are able to capture superb quality at lighting levels where in the past cameras would have had to switch to monochrome mode. There is the additional bonus of saving up to 70% of hard disk space by not recording useless noise.
Built-in IR lighting
Increasingly popular are cameras with built-in IR lighting which are able to switch the camera from colour mode to IR sensitive monochrome mode as the IR LEDs are activated. Samsung IR bullet cameras, in particular, have a feature which reduces the power of the IR LEDs as a subject gets closer to perfectly balance out the image across the foreground and background, avoiding blooming and loss of detail when the subject is close to the camera.
Advanced DSP chipset technology
The low light capability of a camera is very much dependant on the quality, sensitivity and feature set of its DSP chipset. Cameras equipped with Samsung’s SV-5 DSP chipset technology, for example, are able to capture very high quality colour images at up to 650TVL when the lux level is as low as 0.0002 and monochrome images when the lighting level is as low as 0.00002 lux with its sens-up feature.