BW HD CCTV Camera Sony EFFIO-E 700TVL Surveillance Camera Day/Night 2.8-12mm Vari-Focal Home Security Dome Camera Outdoor or Indoor Use - Korea Grey

very good clear slightly large Camera. sturdy construction with plenty of adjustments available. Only one concern was the length of the joystick to the camera is to close. I had to set it up before mounting as could not get to the joystick when mounted. Camera focus and distance are easily adjusted with a little screwdriver.

Good image quality, but one failed after a couple of weeks, so a bit disappointed as I had mounted it on the house :-(

Sent it back - rubbish colour fluctuations.Spent ages trying to set it up.constantly fading from colour to BW at night - avoid

Poor build quality, after 4 months it's now misting up all of the time and therefore sending it back.Picture quality at both night and in the day was excellent, but let down by truly terrible picture quality!

As a CCTV camera this produces excellent pictures, and it appears to match the quoted resolution of 650 'TVlines' colour and 700 'TVLines' Black & White from a sensor with 976 elements on 582 rows (Bayer mask). The sensitivity and AGC operation is excellent, and I find that I have turned off the noise reduction even for night use.The infra red LEDs have a good range of about 30metres in the centre of the picture suitable for a long Zoom, but are less effective at the edges when the Zoom is wide. To protect them they have a separate piece of glass from that which covers the lens, so there is no risk of flare from the LEDs upsetting the camera picture when they are on.The set-up menus allow fine tuning to optimise the performance to suit the application, including adjusting the sharpness to correct for cable losses and yet have a clean picture which is not too edgy. The field of view Zoom is a genuine 4:1 and requires a small screwdriver, but the least touch on that adjustment also requires the Focus to be corrected to match. Fiddly.Power consumption is typical for this kind of camera; it uses 80mA from the 12V supply in daylight, and this rises to about 310mA when the LEDs are lit. So if left on 24/7 it will cost around £3.50 a year to run with a normal PSU and a 13p domestic electricity tariff. Note that the camera does NOT come with a power unit, fortunately I already had a suitable 12V supply and a  splitter lead  capable of feeding four cameras.Menu controls include, Contrast, Brightness, Hue, 'Gain' (saturation), Sharpness, Noise reduction for Luma and/or Chroma, Shutter and AGC modes, White Balance modes, Camera ID, Sync modes, and many more security related functions.So why is it silly? All the menu controls are by a button switch with five-ways of movement (N,S,E,W, and press in), sounds good so far, but it is on the short lead adjacent to the camera, not inside in the dry at the monitor end of the necessary long  extension cable  (not supplied with the camera). So to make any adjustment at all after installation you need to be up a ladder with a phone in one hand and the screwdriver or button set in the other while conversing with your helper who is inside looking at the monitor. This is what loses it a star.I first tested it and set it up indoors and then aimed out a window, using a spare extension cable of the correct length while still able to watch the monitor, and tried to anticipate all the conditions that the adjustments are there to cater for. Fortunately, it remembers the settings. Some of the descriptions of the menus in the data sheet are poorly translated, and really one needs to experiment with the controls to find out what they actually mean; for example the 'Gain' shown in the on-screen menus and in the data sheet actually means 'Chroma Gain' or 'Saturation'. But I still needed someone to help me fine tune the Zoom and Focus and direction when I was fifteen feet up the ladder.One of the reasons for going with a 'Dome' camera rather than the cheaper 'Bullet' cameras is that the spiders are less keen to cover a dome with their webs. Except this camera has several spider-sized holes in the mounting plate, to encourage them to use it as a home base even if not stringing their webs across the lens. So I had to fill those holes with black silicone. Yes, I know it is cruel to exclude all those spiders who do such a valuable job in keeping the biting insects at bay, but my security is even more important to me.On balance this is a very good camera, and if the menu controls could have been at the monitor end of the extension cable I would have said it was brilliant. I've posted two pictures to show how day and night compare.Addendum. 6th June 2013A camera that does have the controls at the monitor end of the cable is this  PRO-750 PTZ camera  from Swann. However it has almost doubled in price since I bought mine, and its lens is not so good as this one.Addendum 2. 19th December 2013.I have found a better  PTZ EFFIO 700TVL camera  with an excellent 12:1 Zoom. It is not a complete kit solution like the PRO-750, and therefore more expensive, but still well worth a look.

I decided to purchase 2 of these cameras after another reviewer purchased 1 then wrote a very comprehensive review and more importantly uploaded 1 day time and 1 night time image of the quality the pictures.The installation wa relatively simple but the only thing that I or anybody is concerned about is how clear will the pictures of peoples faces be. I have only seen faces during the day and all I can personally say is..WOW...very impressive.If the clarity of the images are nearly as good if not as good then I will be very happy.

Nice solid camera. Build quality feels really good. Colour rendering excellent. This is not my first Sony Effio camera , I knew it would be up to the job. The colour I would describe as "matt anthracite".Ours is installed under the eaves where it's relatively sheltered.Quite a big clunky thing this, so check the dimensions before ordering. Also worth pointing out that this is one of those cameras which has a little "control joystick" thingy built into the cable. This is so you can make "technical adjustments". Fortunately I didn't have to because the factory settings seem to work just fine.

B E W A R EAs soon as you connect the camera to your network (which has internet access) it makes a connection to a chinese web address.