Get a good face shot!

Use Higher quality cameras at entry areas Doors, gates and other entry areas need a good quality, high resolution camera to record a good 'face shot.' The video from this camera should be considered a highly valuable since it can be used as evidence in identifying a person in a court of law.

Wide Angle Cameras for large surveillance areas

Once you can get a good shot of a persons face, you should use a wider angle camera lens for the interior surveillance spaces of the building. Using color cameras inside your building is a good idea because you can readily identify a person by the clothes they are wearing. Used in conjunction with the face shot at the entry point, you have an excellent record of all people and activities in your surveillance areas.

Use Bullet Security Cams and Dome Security Cams!

They're Low Cost, High Performance, can be uses indoors and outdoors and available in Color or B&W. Dome cams and bullet cams come in many low cost models. Good quality B&W cams start at less than $80 and good color cams start at $150. When it comes to budgets, having a low cost black & white camera is better than no camera at all.

Black and white cameras have advantages over color security cameras

Most B/W cameras can see in lower light and have higher resolution than color cameras. If most of your surveillance goals are at night and your budget is limited, a black & white camera may actually be your best solution.

Professional and Standard C-Mount Cameras

If your budget permits, a c-mount camera offer a big advantage over other cctv cameras.

C-Mount or CS-Mount?

C-mount and CS-Mount lenses offer similar performance, the only real difference is the way the lens mounts to the camera. And that's not a problem since the adapter to convert 'C-Mount' to 'CS-Mount' comes with the camera. This enables the camera to use either C-Mount or CS-Mount lenses.

Lenses can be changed!

They simply unscrew from the camera body, just like the way lenses are removed from traditional cameras. There are lens options from 2.5mm up to 500mm providing many different magnification options.

In general, an 8mm lens is like a 4mm lens magnified 200%. A 16mm lens is like the 4mm lens magnified 400%

Outdoor Housing

C-mount cameras can be used outside when put in an outdoor camera housing like the photo to the right needed to protect the camera. Heat and Fans are necessary in the 'extreme climate areas.' See our outdoor housings

Varifocal Lenses

You can also use a varifocal lens on a c-mount camera body. The higher millimeter of the lens the further distance viewable. C-Mount cameras can use a varifocal lens. This is a huge advantage because you can adjust zoom and focus. With Varifocal lenses the focus can be varied from 5mm to 20mm or more.

Even after installed, the varifocal camera lens can be adjusted to choose a variety of focal distances and angles of view. An example of where you might use a varifocal lens is outside (or inside) a warehouse or parking lot where you need more distance than 35 feet.

Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ)

Pan-Tilt-Zoom Cameras also known as PTZ cameras are excellent devices to use when you want to 'look around' your surveillance area.

PTZ cameras allow you to pan an entire room, tilt up and down and zoom in on anything or anybody within the sight of the lens.

PTZ cameras can be set to automatic or manual mode or both. In automatic mode, hundreds of points can be set for the camera to look at. The duration that the camera looks at a given set point can be adjusted from less than a second to as long as you would like.

There are some variances in different models. Some have 17x zooms while others have 50x zooms or more.

About CCTV Security Cameras: Closed circuit television also known as CCTV is the industry standard in surveillance security cameras. CCTV can be a single network of cameras or multiple networks of camera linked together via switches, internet, dvr or wide area computer technology. CCTV Video data is analog. The analog signal can be converted to digital via CCTV Digital Video Recorders. Once the video data is digital it can be managed just like any other computer data and can be stored automatically on computers and network storage devices.

John Beagle is a technology writer for Xponex Web and Media Services