black and white at night - hikvision

Good day.

why is it that an IP camera is black and white at night? what is the reason behind this?

Thank you

Better night vision with the IR

You can manually force it into color, but you probably won't like the results

Better night vision with the IR

 

You can manually force it into color, but you probably won't like the results

Unless you back it up with external lighting.

Using LED flood lamps has worked very well for me.

In theory, you get better sensitivity in BW mode, but I haven't found that to be true on any of the cams I've tried it on.

Some cameras let you set both color mode and move the IR filter out, which gives both IR sensitivity and can give better images due to more contrast. I run several Vivotek IP8332 cams like that, and the color image at night, even with IR on, is better than BW.

I don't think Hik will let you do that, as the IR filter is controlled by the day/night mode, and can't be switched independently like on the Vivotek.