Axis P3367 IP Camera Review
The P3367 is one of the newer models from Axis, who has been introducing new models at a dizzying pace. This is a top rated 5 megapixel camera with excellent low light sensitivity. There are two models available; the P3367V is a vandal proof indoor model while the P3367VE is the outdoor version.
The camera includes many functions that improve the picture quality over a wide range of lighting conditions, e.g. the remote focus and zoom p-iris lens that improves depth of field even at low light conditions.
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Resolution
The camera uses the latest 5 megapixel sensor to provide maximum clarity with a resolution of 2592×1944. The camera can be set to lower resolutions and for the resolution test we reduced the resolution to 2 Megapixels.
Resolution is measured by observing where the converging lines were not visible. We were able to discern the excellent resolution provided by this camera.
Lens
Axis has a very easy to use adjustable lens with auto focus. When the zoom adjustment is made, you then select the auto focus button to focus the lens. If for some reason the auto focus doesn’t work there is a manual adjustment in the advanced settings. The viewing window that shows the video is large enough to see the changes you are making without switching to live view, but it is always a good idea to go to live view for the final adjustments. The lens adjusts between 3 to 9 mm, 84°-30° view.
Day/Night and Minimum Illumination
This is a true day / night camera so it has an IR filter. The camera does very well in low light situations. We adjusted the lighting in the room to about 0.1 lux, but the test was really to compare one camera against another rather than provide an absolute measurement.
Low Light Test
The camera specification says Color: 0.2 lux, B/W: 0.04 lux, F1.2. It performed very well against the other cameras in the test. It had the least amount of noise at the lowest light level.
Camera Settings
Axis provides many different image and system settings so you can get the best picture depending on the environment. The settings page was easy to understand and use.
Motion Detection
The motion detection was very powerful and easy to set. The Action Rules table allows you to set the camera to do many different things when alarms are detected.
There are more adjustments available than any other camera. You can add windows and exclude certain areas; you can also select the object size, history and sensitivity. This allows you to fine tune the detection and reduce false alarms dramatically.
The rules table allows you to set up what actions should occur if certain alarms are triggered. The audio noise detection is a nice feature. It’s easily adjustable and can be helpful in detecting a loud noise like a gun shot or a person screaming.
Wide Dynamic Range and Backlight Compensation
These two settings are sometimes confused. Both improve the lighting of various parts of the scene. If you have a scene where there is a very bright area in the background, it will cause the object in the foreground to appear in silhouette. You can use either backlight compensation or wide dynamic range (WDR) settings to adjust for this.
If you turn on backlight compensation, the camera will try to adjust to the darker part of the scene so you can see the object in the foreground, but the background will appear washed out.
If you want to see the objects in foreground as well as the objects in the background you need wide dynamic range. This Axis camera has an adjustment for WDR and the image with a bright background was reasonably good.
Just an aside here: Wide dynamic range is measured in dB, which is the relative difference between the lowest light level and the highest light visible in the image. It used to be that a camera with 60 dB of WDR was considered good, but some new cameras, such as the Axis P3384, incorporate a special process that averages a number of images at different exposure levels to create a composite that has 120 dB of dynamic range.
Summary
This is an excellent camera. It did very well against the other cameras in the test. It has excellent resolution, works well in low light conditions, as well as challenging lighting such as background to foreground light differences. There are many motion detection adjustments that can be used to reduce false alarms. The manufacturer’s suggested resale price is $1159 for the indoor vandal proof model and $1319 for the outdoor version.