There are 3 main styles of CCTV cameras;

• Bullet (traditional long body) - Bullet cameras are a good visible deterrent, but tend to larger than either Dome or Eyeball cameras.

• Dome (glass dome covering lens) - Dome cameras are very robust, and vandal resistant, as they have a cover for the lens, however they have to be very carefully mounted to avoid dome reflections, especially at night with IR.

• Eyeball (compact exposed lens) - Eyeball cameras are the most universal style bing easy to position and discreet in size.

CCTV cameras are either sold with a fixed lens or a variable lens.

The focal length of the lens will depend on what you want to be able to view with the camera and what depth of focus you require i.e. a wide angle lens (2.8mm) will give a very wide angle of view but the sharpness of the image will not be so good at distance, conversely a longer lens (12mm) would give good detail at distance but would not have a very wide image.

Most CCTV cameras have a range of Intelligent features built in, these can include tripwire, object counting, object removal and tamper detection.

More advanced features can include number plate recognition (ANPR) and facial recognition. Using these additional features can enhance your house or workplace security.

CCTV cameras are not so good at differentiating between somebody walking and a tree moving, as they analyse the change of the viewing image.

Cameras can be set up with various levels of sensitivity and/or analytical software but a simple PIR sensor is often a best way to get a reliable notification of intruders.

Although CCTV cameras are great for keeping an eye on your property when you are not at home or asleep, during the day when you are at home and awake, you may wish to limit the CCTV viewing and recording.

For your security and privacy, we have a range of options that can limit CCTV viewing and recording, which can be either manually operated by the user or automatically linked to the occupancy of the property and/or the time of day.