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ohliuw

Capturing licence plates at night?

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I am having hard time capturing license plates at night on the street in front of my house. Need some advise.

 

During the day I have no issues - capturing is crisp and legible

 

I am using a q-see qtn8039b bullet, zoomed all the way through - the distance between the camera and the cars is somewhere around 20 meters (65 feet).

 

There are some street lights, but not close to where the camera is focused. I tried adding IR lights - first added the Raytec RL50-F-50, which did not work. I then realized that the distance is more than 50 feet (the RL50-F-50 is rated at up to 50 feet), so I bought medium range Vario I4 light. I tried all the three angles (10x10, 30x10 and 60x25), and while it does light up the whole scene, I still cant see anything on the license plates.

 

Help?

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look into a LPR system which will include not only the camera but software that deals with the multiple issues of reading license plates especially at night as many have reflecting surfaces and different designs.

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Is the image of the plate blurred, washed out, or too dark?

 

Those are all different problems, with different solutions; most common is a blurred image from a low shutter speed.

 

If that's the case, (or a washed out image), turn up the minimum shutter speed to 1/250 or so, gain up if adjustable, and see what you get (usually a somewhat dark and grainy image, but readable).

 

Dark is just going to require more illumination.

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with plate capture at night its all about the shutter speed.

I generally run 1/1000 as the slowest speed for night time and set the quickest shutter speed to 1/8000 for day time...

 

the camera used to take these pics is a Uniview IPC252

Distance from camera to plates is around 45m...

The night image is a little out of focus as I have been playing with the zoom and auto focus...

 

 

 

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