In 2003, a security camera had a resolution of 0.3 Megapixels and today they commonly have resolutions upward of 2 Megapixels. So why in 2016 are we still getting useless footage like this image of a biker shootout captured on a home CCTV system?
Image courtesy of Twitter @CameronBaud7
the fundamental reason is expectation
Let’s forget the guy over the road as he is in an area the camera was never intended to cover and instead look at the area up to the road. My educated guess is the house owner wants to know who came into their yard and either did damage of stole something.
Problem 1
The camera is too high and will at best only see to tops of someone’s head.
Look at the car – you can clearly see the sun roof but not inside the car. The same would apply for a person’s face – you would see the top of their head but no detail of the face, particularly if they are wearing a hat or have their head down. The camera should have no more than a 30-degree tilt on it if you want to see faces.
Problem 2
The second major issue with the installation is the camera is covering too much.
Even if the camera was installed at a suitable height of say 2 metres, the width of the scene is too wide. There is a person directly behind the car, who it should be possible to identify given the short distance but the combination of the resolution and scene width make it impossible to do little more with this scene than say “Yes there was a car and 2 people on the street at the time of this incident”. No, the police cannot enhance this as you might believe from CSI and the only way to improve this is to lower your expectations along the camera.
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