Sure I can come out and dig around their scrap piles if I want.

So anyway I want to set up a video system to monitor my back driveway. At least 4 cameras.

The red dots. The yellow is where the ramps were sitting in front of my shed.
They had to come up into my yard/driveway a good bit, so it wasn't an accident, like I had left it in the alley.
I figure one on the back fence, one in the shed, one inside the house pointed out a window, and maybe another on the other side of the fence to catch them coming or going.

I want to keep it under 1k, for the cameras and dvr, but I understand if it is more expensive. I have priced out a couple of setups and it looks like 1k is reasonable, but don't want to cheap out on it.

I've got about $300 in my 2 camera (expandable to 4) setup.  It's not high dollar by any means but works well.

Wireless outdoor color cameras, IR lights (only good for 7 meters), TV PCI Card in a junk PC I upgraded with a big hard drive and there you go.

If you don't want to set that kind of thing up yourself, there are complete packages as well.

Cyberguys

They are just a vendor, but they were still willing to help my complete my setup, and even went as far as pulling stock off the shelf and setting it up to help solve a problem.

I got my stuff through supercircuits.com

my concern is being able to read license plates and see faces at the distances shown.
Figure the driveway is 60 feet long and about 10 feet wide.