A HD camera or not a HD camera for surveillance??

[Cazz]

A HD camera is always good but if you only going to recording about 5-10 meters is that any point to have one.

[Cornucopia]

All depends on the recording format & bitrate, IMO. If that is sufficient enough, an HD image will be much more helpful down the road. Particularly when you may need to blow up a section of the image to a much larger size for investigation or courtroom purposes. Even if you size down to SD rez, your HD source would likely look better.

But bitrate will determine your size requirements, and you may have some constraints on that. If bitrate is NOT sufficient, however, you may be better served with decent quality SD video rather than crappy quality HD video.

Scott

<edit>Well, also depends on the relative qualities of the optics of the camera lens and of the sensors used. The above was "all else being equal".</edit>

[Cazz]

Thanks for the replay

Well yes you are right about that but it is hard to know what is good.

The information I have found about the HD camera is this

Image Frame Rate 30fps(60Hz), 25fps(50Hz), downward adjustable
Resolution (1.3Megapixel)1280 x 960, 720P(1280 x 720), VGA(640 x 480), QVGA(320 x 240)

and the SD camera

Image Frame Rate 15fps(VGA),30fps(QVGA)
Resolution 640 x 480(VGA), 320 x 240(QVGA)

The only think I can see is that 15fps for 640x480 is not much and I guess it going to feel it bad

[Cornucopia]

Especially when doing surveillance, clarity in both TIME (framerate) and SPACE (resolution, quality) is paramount. 15fps is poor, these days.

Don't know what your budget or workflow is, but you may want to consider using a GoPro Hero 3+BlkEd, as it has great resolution and framerate, a wide angle of view, is small & lightweight, and it can be run via AC/USB and record for hours upon hours with a good size card. Even low light performance isn't too bad.

Scott

[jagabo]

It depends on what you need to see.

[Cazz]

mm but that I looking after is a camera that have PoE and can save recording on a server.
It also have to have IR so it can recording in the dark and outside.
So I think the best camera is for me Foscam FI9805E.
That I have see on youtube is have a good quality of video and have all that I need.

[Cornucopia]

If you need server control & storage, and you need POE, and you need IR capability, then you are right the GoPro is NOT for you, and something like that Foscam is much more suited.

Scott