Demystifying Security Cameras | 4K, IP Ratings & Storage

Almost every customer who calls us starts the conversation the same way: “I just want a camera that actually works when something happens.” Fair enough. The problem is the spec sheet in front of them is full of numbers that don’t mean much on their own, 4K, IP67, ColorVu, H.265, and none of it tells you whether the footage will actually hold up when you need it.

The same thing we run through with customers on site, whether that’s a house in Mawson Lakes or a shopfront in the CBD.

Resolution: what 1080p, 2K and 4K actually get you

Resolution is just how many pixels make up the image. More pixels means you can zoom in further before the picture turns to mush. Beyond that, it’s mostly about matching the resolution to the distance you’re actually trying to cover.

1080p is fine for indoor rooms and short hallways, anywhere the camera’s close to whatever it’s watching. The catch is if something happens ten metres away and you try to zoom in after the fact, you’ll often get a smear of pixels instead of a face or a plate.
2K, sometimes labelled 4MP, is a reasonable middle ground for a driveway or a small shop. Roughly double the detail of 1080p, and it’s usually enough to make out a face at a normal walking distance.
4K, or 8MP, is what we push people toward for car parks, loading bays and anything facing the street. It’s not that you need to watch in 4K day to day, it’s that when you do need to zoom into a recording six weeks later to read a number plate, having the extra resolution banked is the only reason that’s still possible.

IP ratings: the two numbers that actually matter

Every outdoor camera has an IP rating printed somewhere on the box, something like IP66 or IP67. It’s two digits. The first is dust protection, 0 to 6, where 6 means basically sealed. The second is water protection, 0 to 9, where higher numbers mean it’ll survive a hose blast or brief submersion, not just drizzle.

In practical terms for Adelaide: IP65 is fine tucked under a veranda where it’s not getting hit directly by weather. IP66 is what you want on an exposed outdoor wall that copes with proper rain. IP67 is what we recommend for anything fully exposed, especially near the coast. We’ve replaced more than one camera in Glenelg that looked fine on the outside but had salt air corrosion eating the internals within a couple of years, because someone installed an IP65 unit somewhere that really needed IP67.

Night vision: infrared or full colour, and it’s a genuine trade-off

Most break-ins and vandalism happen after dark, which makes night vision arguably more important than daytime resolution. There are two real options here, and honestly, neither is strictly better, it depends what you’re after.

Traditional infrared gives you black and white footage lit by IR LEDs you can’t see. It’s invisible to anyone nearby, efficient, and works at longer range. The downside is obvious once you actually need the footage: you can’t tell police the car was red, because everything’s grey.
Full colour, sold as ColorVu or spotlight cameras, keeps colour through the night using a warm white spotlight and a very sensitive sensor. You’ll actually be able to say “red jacket, blue car” instead of guessing. The trade-off is that spotlight is visible, and if the camera’s near a bedroom window, yours or a neighbour’s, that can genuinely become an issue. We’ve had a couple of installs where we ended up angling the spotlight lower specifically to avoid lighting up next door’s window.

Storage: NVR at home versus footage in the cloud

Recording something is pointless if you can’t get the footage back afterwards, so this bit matters more than people expect going in.

An NVR, a recorder with a hard drive sitting on site, costs nothing ongoing once it’s installed, records continuously, and keeps everything private since nothing leaves the building. The trade-off is the hard drive itself, they don’t last forever, expect to swap it out somewhere around the four or five year mark, and if someone steals the actual recorder along with the cameras, you’ve lost the footage too.

Cloud storage sends clips off-site as they happen, so even if the whole camera and recorder get taken, the footage already made it out. That peace of mind comes with a monthly fee per camera, and it leans on your internet connection actually staying up, which isn’t always guaranteed everywhere.

Plenty of systems we install these days run both, NVR for the bulk of the footage, cloud for key event clips, so you’re covered either way. It costs a bit more but it closes the gap in both directions.

FAQs

Is 4K actually worth paying more for?
For anything outdoors, a driveway, a car park, a street-facing wall, yes. For a small indoor space where the camera’s only a few metres from what it’s watching, 1080p or 2K does the job and you’re not really gaining much by going higher.

What IP rating do I actually need outdoors in Adelaide?
IP66 as a baseline for anything properly exposed to weather. If it’s coastal, like Glenelg, or somewhere dusty and windswept like the industrial areas around Port Adelaide, go IP67. It costs a little more upfront and saves you replacing a corroded camera in two years.

How much storage does a typical four camera system need?
With modern compression, a 2TB to 4TB drive usually covers around a month of continuous recording on four 4K cameras. It varies a bit depending on how much motion the cameras are actually picking up, a busy car park fills a drive faster than a quiet side gate.