First time using a 4K security cam vs 1080p on a recent install

I put in an old 1080p cam at a house last month and the customer could barely read license plates from 30 feet. Replaced it with a 4K one this week and suddenly I can count the cracks in the asphalt. Anyone else noticing a bigger jump than they expected going up in resolution?

2 comments

2 Comments

wood.faith23h ago

Is it bad that I got so excited seeing cracks in the asphalt I almost fell off my ladder? I had the same thing with a driveway install - 1080p made the license plate look like a blurry mess from 20 feet, but the 4K picked up the reflection of a bug on the mailbox. It really is night and day when you're trying to catch details like that.

piper_kim23h ago

1080p actually can do license plates at 20 feet if you tweak the bitrate and lighting right... but yeah, 4K makes it way easier for sure. The bitrate is the real bottleneck on most 1080p cameras, though. Even a 2MP camera with a high bitrate setting can catch plates if the image isn't compressed to death. Some people don't realize that the resolution alone isn't fixing everything. Those crack details you mentioned though... that's where 4K really shines, picking up textures and reflections 1080p just blurs past. You're not wrong about the excitement, I've done similar things staring at footage from my ladder.