There's a gazebo in our community that has become a hub for selling drugs. It's located about 60 yards from my home with a clear line of sight. What would be a good focal length for monitoring it with an ipcam?

PTZ's are expensive and typically look out of place on a house.

I'd consider a motorized varifocal camera (autofucus is a must).   You could adjust it to the focal length that gets you the reach you need but could pull it back from your app if need be. Something with good low light sensitivity

2.8-12mm is common and might be good enough.   7-22mm would likley be better but the cost is going to be more and it wont pull back near as far.

Monitoring how?
What do you want to accomplish?

General scene monitoring is different than facial re ognition or license plate reading.

Need to define what you want to accomplish, then look to the pixels per square foot or square meter calculations to accomplish those tasks.c

I already have an Hikvision network of cameras so I ended up going with this one:

https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/IP-Products/Network-Cameras/DeepinView-Series/ids-2cd7a45g0-iz-h-s-y-/

With a 4.7mm-118mm lens it's proven very capable so far; I can make out faces in parked cars in good light and it's capturing plates easily. Will see how it does at night once I get it mounted outside; it's currently in a 4th floor window. This is zoomed in about halfway.

Attached File


The problem may be close to resolution already though. There are a lot of cops/military in our community. One neighbor a few doors up from me is FBI and showed me names and photos of all the visitors. Apparently he and some other agencies were already onto this.

The visitors are suppliers, dropping off narcotics to sellers in quantity. They sure picked a stupid spot to do this. I do appreciate the input.

Looks like your off to a promising start.    That is a lot of camera for the money.  Make sure it is mounted to something sturdy.