Suggestions on how to improve night vision on Hikvision?

Hi - sorry for the camera setting newbie question. I have been playing with the camera settings but i can't seem to get the "grainy" look out of the night time view. The day time views look great!

Not sure if I should be adjusting the sharpness, exposure time, DNR (currently on), etc...

Please see attached picture, camera is Hikvision DS-2CD7283F-EIZH.

Thank you for any suggestions!

Turn down the gain as much as you can while still maintaining a good picture.

I have mine at 63...default was 100

(its under Exposure setting)

my DNR is set at 100 and seems to help.

The more gain, the brighter the picture, but more noise i think.

You can also add in external illuminators. There's some decent inexpensive ones out there like the Tri-Illuminator and CMVision IR3.

Is the lack or external / additional illuminators causing the grainy look in the picture? I am ok with some dark areas but the overall grainy look is what my first issue that I am trying to solve.

I will turn down the gain tonight when it is dark and see if that helps. Weird that a couple of my external cameras don't have this grainy look and some do...

Could also be due to it being a 5 MP camera...

are your other cameras 5 MP too?

That's pretty good for a low end 5MP camera, you can't expect it to be as good as a 1MP or 3MP camera and all the settings in the world are not going to make it much better. If you don't want noise and you don't want external illuminators, consider the Axis P3367-VE or Bosch Dinion Starlight 8000MP, both compare to 3MP cameras in low light sensitivity.

Hmmm - attached is a snapshot of all the cameras I have installed so far.

Some are definitely better than others for picture quality (different environments for sure) - but I will play with the DNR, gain, etc and see how it goes.

are your other cameras 5 MP too?

Yes, exact same camera - Hikvision, 5 MP

When you are in an enclosed area where the IR LEDs reflect off objects and are nearer by, you'll get a clearer image. Also, common to Hikvision is the IR illuminator is not wide enough for their widest angle lenses creating a spotlight effect. Putting in say 2 illuminators, one on each side of center would provide a more evenly lit image and less noise. For example, this is a Hikvision with a 4mm lens, many would be happy with this image

But to me it was too dark in spots. One $60 illuminator made a huge difference./

Thanks buellwinkle - good pictures.

Is the lack of external / additional illuminators causing the grainy look on my roof picture?

I am ok with "dark spots" but surprised the overall grainy look of the picture. Otherwise love the new cameras so far.

Yes it will. The grain you see that most of us call noise is because the camera is trying to push the sensor beyond what is reasonable. You can control this by reducing max gain to say 50, but then the image will be dark. It will also save on disk space as it takes more bits to store noise. If you have a suspect in that image, the noise will make identifying the suspect all that more difficult.