CCTV Lighting guide

The modern digital CCTV camera can operate at low light levels with no additional lighting, which is a different story from the traditional analogue CCTV camera.  However, using even digital CCTV cameras at low light levels may make the images blurred or reduce the colour depth. 

Typically, when a CCTV camera is installed in a room of a house or an office, during the hours of darkness you will see that the images from the camera become less distinct, and moving objects such as people are particularly badly affected.  The camera will attempt to adjust automatically for this scenario, but there are limits to what it can do, and images will be impossible to see in a totally dark room.  Assuming that the cameras does not have built-in lighting, what can you do?  please read on as we take a look at some of the possible solutions:

Of course, you can always choose a camera with built-in infra red lamps, and often you will find that these cameras can produce great images even at very low light levels.  The cost is the one problems for these cameras, especially the digital ones, which can cost literally twice as much if they have built-in lamps.  The other drawback of infra-red lamps is that the images will be black and white, which may not be desirable.  Let's look at some of the other alternatives:

if you need to have full colour images, you can achieve this with traditional room lighting which is not only inexpensive, but also easy to arrange.  Basically, a few strategically-positioned table lamps is all that you need in the average sized room.  Fit low energy bulbs and you can leave them on literally 24 hours a day at very little cost to yourself or the environment.  Alternatively, fit a timer so that the light only comes on after dark. This adds a little to the initial cost of course.  You will need to position the lights so that they do not shine directly into the camera lens, and ideally even shaded lamps should not be in the camera's view, but rather behind it.

A novel benefit of wireless internet CCTV cameras is their ability to communicate over the internet.  This means that you can do some very advanced things when it comes to home automation.  For example, you can obtain a kit for about £30 that, believe it or not, allows you to send a text message on your phone which is relayed over the internet, to your camera, then down a wire via a switching box - and on to the light, such that the text message causes the light in your home to switch on or off.  Imagine that - you are in a hotel room on the other side of the world, on your laptop, connected to the internet - looking into your home living room.  The view is too dark, so you get out your phone, send a special text message - and hey presto, on comes the light and you can see clearly!  This is so very much more sophisticated than those old analogue systems.

However you do it, ensuring that you provide good lighting to your cameras does not have to be expensive, and I thoroughly recommend it so that you can get the very best out of internet CCTV technology.