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Q-See QSB550SR Weatherproof Color High-Resolution Day/Night Camera Kit (540TVL) 200-Feet Night Vision
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List Price:
$380.99
PC Hardwares Price:
$283.00
Your Savings: $ 97.99 ( 26% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
Manufacturer: Digital Peripheral Solutions
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Electronics
Brand: Digital Peripheral Solutions
EAN: 0645439226951
Feature: 540 TV Lines Resolution
Format: CD
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Digital Peripheral Solutions
Manufacturer: Digital Peripheral Solutions
Model: QSB550SR
Publisher: Digital Peripheral Solutions
Studio: Digital Peripheral Solutions
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Features
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540 TV Lines Resolution
5-50mm Lens Manual Varifocal Lens
1/3" Sony CCD Sensor
15 Giant IR LEDs for 200 ft. of night vision
50 ft. Cable & Power Adapter Included
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Editorial Reviews:
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QSB550SR is a Outdoor/Indoor Color CCD camera kit with night vision. With CCD technology, it delivers the most sophisticated technology into the most reliable and accurate quality picture in the security industry Its ideal for monitoring or recording. The package includes a 50-ft. cable to allow flexible installation. Connect the camera to any TV, VCR, or DVR and start viewing or recording immediately. Q-See outdoor cameras are built to withstand all the elements of nature. Rain, snow or hot sun will not deter the camera from sending clear video. The design of the camera incorporates a weatherproof metal casing with an "O" ring seal to keep the high resolution lens and the internal parts safe from nature. With the 15 Giant Infra Red LEDs, the camera will give black and white night vision for up to 200 ft. in total darkness. For Product Questions contact Q-SEE: (877) 998-3440 or cs@dpsi-usa.com
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Waste of Money
Comment:
Q-See QSB550SR Weatherproof Color High-Resolution Day/Night Camera Kit (540TVL) 200-Feet Night Vision
Don't waste your money... Can't see anything,it's like looking thru a dirty glass... just will not focus.
I have $80 camera's that put this one to shame.
Q-See QSB550SR Weatherproof Color High-Resolution Day/Night Camera Kit (540TVL) 200-Feet Night Vision
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pay attention to the focus
Comment: I like the mounting system for this camera. Very solid and easy to install. The instructions in the box are not very good, so here are a few tips: Be sure to use the mounting ring that comes with the camera. First you attach the mounting base ring to your surface, and then attach the camera base to the mounting ring using the included allen screws (an allen wrench is also included in the box). The first camera I installed without the mounting ring (I just screwed the camera base to the surface) and I realized my error after the camera was installed. I remounted the camera using the base ring and believe me, installing the base ring first makes for a much easier installation.
Second, don't give up on the focus. The camera has a zoom ring, and a focus ring. First turn the zoom ring to get the zoom level you want, and then turn the focus ring to focus the image. One of my cameras looked in-focus during the day, but appeared to be out of focus at night. I thought the camera was defective, but I found that making slight focus adjustments at night (while someone watches the monitor inside), gave me perfect focus in both daylight and nighttime conditions. I went back and tweaked the focus on my other camera at night and saw a huge improvement in a camera that I thought was already in focus.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great night vision for the price.
Comment: I run a weather web page "http://roboweather.info" and I had a web cam for watching the weather and the wild life on this page. I live in the country and I have some deer feeders out so deer will come around and I wanted to be able to watch them when I was at work. Well last year I decided get my own pet deer. So I put up a kennel where the web cam would also show me my pet deer. I did not realize how obsessive deer can be. The wire for my web cam was too close to the fence, she found it and severed it. I thought that this is a great time to upgrade. I really wanted to get a night vision camera so I could see the wild deer that come around at night, right after installing the other camera, but I could not justify it since I had just installed this camera. It was hard to find a camera that would work for the distances I was looking at. My deer's kennel is 145 ft long and the feeder for the wild deer is on the outside of that. So I needed a camera that would work at distances to around 200ft. I did some searching and there were cheap cameras and expensive cameras. I had to rule out the expensive because I simply could not afford them. I was very disappointed in the cheap cameras because I could not get one to fit my need. The selection of cameras in the mid range was very limited. At the time I bought this camera there were no reviews for it that I could find. Finally I bit the bullet and bought this camera because the description matched what I was looking for. After ordering the camera I found a review for the camera I just bought that was incredibly helpful.
5.0 out of 5 stars Professional quality hidden under the hood, March 2, 2008
By HMMWV "(the real thing)"
Reading his review I found that the camera had some hidden features. But in order to use these features you need to play with some wires. I received the camera and found it to be quite a bit larger then I was expecting. My last camera was a little bullet camera about an inch in diameter. This camera was large and solid. I used the information provided in the review above and I actually emailed the reviewer and he was again very helpful. So I built my own remote for this camera and permanently connected it to the camera. I have a long cord so I can sit at my computer and look at the input from the camera and use the remote right there to configure it. I think this is good because it will allow me to set different settings as the seasons changes.
The camera is up and working on my web page now at http://roboweather.info where you can see both day and night pictures. because I am not hosting my own web page, I do not have streaming video. Pictures are uploaded about every 2 minutes. I have the camera focused for daytime pictures. One little down fall for this camera and probably the only reason I did not give it 5 stars is because If you focus the camera for daytime pictures then the night vision pictures will be a little fuzzy, or vice versa. The camera gives really good daytime pictures, it has both a focus and a zoom control. The zoom is really nice too. Another down fall was that the mount did not have a double knuckle so it was limited to up - down, OR left - right where a double knuckle would provide both up - down and left - right adjustments. Due to where I had to mount the camera I was not able to move it and get the exact look I wanted. But with the zoom I was able to get close enough to what I wanted to look at. I could build a remote for you if you really want. You can find my email address on my web page listed above.
The night vision is the best part of this camera to me. The IR LED's are very bright if you look at my web page at night you can see how they light up the area. There is a lot of snow on the ground which really lets you see the illumination circle. But it is amazing you can see the sky and full tree line in the background. You can see my pet deer when she is out there but you have to look for her she blends in pretty good sometimes. When you go out you are in the dark if you look at the camera you will see the IR LED's illuminated red but they do nothing for you vision. If your considering this camera I would suggest you look at my web page both day and night to see how it looks, and I would be prepared to get a hold of a remote. I have not found them on the web but you can make your own, and it will really enhance your experience with this camera. The noise reduction setting really helps remove the noise for much clearer night vision. You need that remote to make changes to this setting as well. I really like the camera and all the features. Two small improvements would really make this a great camera, 1 ship it with a remote and 2 add a double knuckle to the mount.
Feel free to email me questions if you want. Again my email address is on my web page.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Be careful
Comment: This camera comes with Very little documentation. The picture is fuzzy, even after using the focus knob. There are many setting you can change from what the documentation shows, but doesn't tell you how to set them. Calling Q-See's support line is hard to get to someone and when you do they usual don't know anything about it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Professional quality hidden under the hood
Comment: Revised 8/09 Q-see parts now stocks a 19.99 remote keypad to turn on all the advanced features for this camera. I've also been told the 520 now has the keypad jack, but my camera did NOT come with a jack.
Also re: focusing - it is an iterative process to adjust both the zoom and focus dials together that are weathersealed. Because zoom affects focus you must "dial it in" after a few adjustments. When night comes you may need to fine tune the adjustment for the wide open aperature of night viewing and it will still be in focus the next day due to the increased depth of field. When it is first plugged in you will see a fuzzy blob until you move both rings to their stops and back to find the focus and zoom that works for your installation, then it won't change due to the sealed design of the case. The instructions do not tell you how to do this.
(ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW)
I could not decide 5 or 4 stars. The reason again is price. (revised again - price used to be $350 and now is under 300, so I would give it 5 stars at todays price but amazon changes prices) I settled on 5 stars because this is the "high end" camera series from q-see and you expect to pay more. As it turns out you get alot more than you pay for so it got the 5 star rating. If all the hidden features were not there it would be 4 stars, but they put a 10 page manual with it to explain the customization options this unit has and it earns the 5 star rating.
Let me say, PLEASE take a look at my photos (I will upload them after the review). Q-see makes 2 versions of this camera - the qsb520SR Q-See QSB520SR Weatherproof Color High-Res Day/Night Camera Kit (540TVL) with 65-Feet Night Vision which is about $100 cheaper and only goes out 65 feet, and uses a smaller led with more of them.
NOWHERE DOES Q-SEE nor amazon show the two cameras side by side. I ordered this one (the 550) when the price dropped below $320 which was my threshold of pain. When it arrived I really felt I got a good deal -here's why.
Without having both a 520 and 550 you dont realize this camera is HUGE. All the photos are scaled to the same size which hides the massive 550. I'll be sure to get a side by side photo uploaded so you can see the difference.
Comparing the 520 to the 550 is like comparing a nerf office football to a regulation NFL superbowl football. This thing is a monster! (now you need to see the side by side photos) - there's a reason for its size.
The 520 has a 4-9 mm typical home cctv lens (about 2x zoom - decent wide area coverage) and the multiple normal leds illuminate a wide area to match the lens - thus it is evenly illuminated. I still recommend the 520 if your camera is close to where you are trying to watch (0-39 feet lets say). BUT if you want to go the distance, this model is meant for it out of the box.
First, it inludes a high end 5-50 mm zoom lens (Yes, thats 10X zoom instead of 2x zoom on the 520 - I run my 520 at about 7mm zoom to see my backyard driveway). The size of the optics is what made the camera so big. The professional lens is a very nice surprise. In macro mode with the IR leds you can see the veins under the skin placing your hand in front of it.
Second, the LEDs are the high end jumbo high output type and have a tight focus to shoot a long distance. They are extremely bright. The camera features a .0006 lux rating w/o the leds, or 0 lux with them so it is a really sensitive combination (which needs to be tamed - more on that below)
Third, the imager in this is definitely top of the line - it is using a 1/3" sony super had cctv imager with a beautiful day picture and tons of options for night viewing gain and control. We'll get to that next.
Finally, it's user configurable with an on screen display. This is its weakest point and its strongest point. Q-see doesn't tell you nor do they sell the remote control that plugs into the camera to let you configure it. When you get it, you'll find a ps-2 mouse mini-din connector like on the back of your PC along with the power and video out connectors. That houses the remote control wires which are completely undocumented except for the manual which tells you what they do but not which one does what function.
I went to the computer store and bought a male to male ps/2 6-pin extension for $5 and put one end into the camera and held the other in my hand, then grabbed the voltmeter. Assuming the shield was ground, I found 4 pins which were at a ttl high level (4.8 vdc) - when I grounded them to the shield I found that one pin was left, one was right, one was down, and one was select which allowed me to make my way through the maze of menus this camera offers during setup on the screen. You can program an on screen name, use its internal motion detector (no image except when there is motion), adjust the gain of the camera, adjust the lens control, and on and on and on.
Now I'm happy about paying the extra 100 bucks. It turns out this model has an undocumented noise reduction chip inside it (noise is a pain for DVR usage because it causes false triggers on the recorder). By shorting different pins to ground with my test lead, I was able to turn on the noise filter, and set it to HIGH (possible settings are HIGH, MED, LOW, OFF). That stopped my DVR from making false recordings due to noise. Then I worked on the next most problematic issue for CCTV - HEADLIGHTS!
Anyone working in surveilance knows that headlights are murder when you have a sensitve camera (like either of the 520 or 550 models) - the image blooms and you loose all detail due to the light. It's called the backlight effect. Well there's another menu to setup how you want the camera to deal with backlighting. And headlights no longer ruin the picture.
In fact there are so many menus, I'll have to take photos of them and put them with the camera comparison because you just can't believe the features packed into the camera and lens system they used in this package.
It's definitely a professional camera.
Negatives
Ok - now that you know the undocumented surprise and why it's $100 more than the 520 which is a fine camera in and of itself - you can see that the 550 was meant for long distance surveilance. Want to watch your front yard from your back yard fence? No problem. But if you mount the camera in the back yard to watch the back door and adjust the lens to 5mm (widest angle) you're going to get a hot spot at night in the center where the LEDs are focused up close. To counter this, you need to make a diffuser (anything from a ring made from a broken florescent light cover to a piece of wax paper) - put the ring around the leds and then they can be used up close (0-39 feet) without a hotspot in the middle. This camera is for the do it yourself type of person. Out of the box it is set with reasonable factory defaults, but it is infinitely customizable to your exact monitoring needs.
Other negatives. Q-see doesn't sell a remote (which is just a PC keyboard cable with 4 switches at the end) but they do include a 10 page pamphlet telling you about the features and hinting about how you can make a remote control. You need 4 momentary switches and a cable off a ps/2 keyboard to build one yourself (or do what I did and just short the wires with a test lead - even a paperclip will work). I'd much rather pay 318 dollars for the camera w/o the remote and make one than pay another $100 for a remote I'm going to use once during setup and install then have to store it somewhere - so I can't fault q-see here at all - but I want to warn you that to take advantage of all those neat features you will have to hunt down a remote on the internet for this camera's clones or else cut a keyboard cable off an old machine and solder one up for yourself. Also they don't tell you what each pin does - trial and error is the only way to discover it. Even if you don't you will still be satisfied with the factory defaults.
Summary -
Even considering the fact I had to make my own remote I still like the image this camera produces. You can even decide if you want a 540 line color image (factory default) at night or a 560 line black and white image at night (I opted to switch to B&W at night and get the extra 20 lines of resolution - I view it on a HD display's composite input so that extra resolution does not go to waste.
This camera can go head to head with the high end pelco and sony fixed mount cameras and beat them with its powerful LED illuminator. It is a little DIYish if you want to use all the features or use it up close - but the rewards in the image will justify the work. If you need help email me (my address is in my profile) for a fast response. You will end up loving this camera after you spend a few hours customizing it even though it works fine out of the box. If anyone finds a remote for sale please let me know and I'll update the review. Thanks!
You are getting a $590 professional grade camera for $318 which is a good deal in my book.
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