TESC – ABOUT CCTV

Some people like to believe that CCTV is useless, and so I thought I would just write a brief article today
about this.

What the consumer wants

The customer wants to see the best detail, at the furthermost range, and at night – all at the cheapest price.

Many suppliers inaccurately describe cameras as though they meet these requirements .

Giving the customer what they want

As an example, I needed to source some cheap cameras urgently. I was looking for about 15m surveillance,
outdoors, and at night. I asked for a 24 Led Camera.

The supplier was happy to offer me the camera – BUT, it came fitted with a 3.6mm lens, and the supplier didn’t
have the option to fit another lens. He had 400 in the warehouse.

Bad buy – not bad CCTV

I will discuss this later – but the average customer buys the 25m, Night Vision camera at face value.

Of course they are setup to be extremely dissapointed with a camera that won’t even provide usable surveillance at anything
more than 5Meters.

The ingenious supplier and the ill informed consumer have just contributed to the bad reputation of cctv. Thats the problem
with Massmart surveillance and DIY installations. Of course I know that professional Integrators aren’t mislead in that
way.

What is the problem with my Mass Mart buy.

Back to the specifics – The consumer will get the same performance from this 24LED, 20M specified camera, as he would get
from a 12LED camera. He wasn’t sold the cheaper 12LED camera though!

Professional CCTV integrators know that this camera and lens combination is going to give you a critical view of a person
10m away from the camera, that only occupies 1.5% of the image size. Compare that to the 5% standard for the lowest level
of acceptable surveillance.

Professional CCTV integrators will be able to specify the correct lens to suit the surveillance objective – be it General
Observation, Forensic or High Detail observation of people, vehicles, or other specific targets.

After discussing this with the supplier, he suggested I try one of the 36LED 1/4″ Sharp CCD cameras he had.

That combination would have got me close to but not quite the 5% at 15M – so why the extra LED’s ?  To top that off
I would be losing half of the total image width at 10M – meaning I would need two cameras to cover the same area.

A professional supplier will at least supply you with a lens that matches the illumination range – surely?

It’s scary to think that he has 400 of those cameras in stock.

CCTV Not the Culprit

CCTV is an effective crime prevention and investigation measure – only when designed and installed by professionals.

Every one who has bought such a camera and probably many other Mass Mart surveillance products has wasted their money.

CCTV and the reputation of many CCTV integrators are unfortunate victims of this Mass Mart, DIY phenomena.