What specs make License Plate Capture Better?

Reminder: "license plate capture" refers to the ability of a camera to record a clear image of a license plate, even in difficult weather or lighting conditions. "License plate recognition" refers to the use of Automated License Plate Recognition technology that reads the characters on the plate. For a discussion about the terms and products, see our main license plate camera knowledge base page.

What Specs are important to License Plate Capture?

1. Resolution

The quality of the image that you are capturing is, of course, the most important factor in being able to read a license plate. The higher the resolution and the more narrow your field of view, the greater the distance from which the plate can be read.

Every single product that we sell has pictures of a license plate at different distances so that you can tell which resolution/lens combination best fits your needs.

2. Headlight Compensation

HLC reduces glare and overexposure due to vehicle headlights that directly point into the camera. The problem is that many cheap camera companies claim any camera with Headlight Compensation (HLC) is a "License Plate Camera" including those that don't record in HD. Don't get us wrong, headlight compensation is a necessary spec required to capture front-facing license plates, but by itself, HLC isn't enough.

Almost all SCW cameras have headlight compensation (HLC) and it would be inaccurate to call every product a specialty "License Plate Camera."

3. Wide Dynamic Range

Instead of using just one set of settings for saturation, brightness, contrast, and sharpness levels, Wide Dynamic Range splits each frame/image into many sections and determines the correct exposure to create a consistent and balanced image. WDR is very useful when recording in situations where different areas of the same scene are going to have varied lighting levels. Most situations where you want to record license plates are going to have these light variations because of headlights and streetlamps.

4. Adjustable Shutter Speed

Every camera (including security, movie, and regular cameras) operates the same way--a shutter opens which allows light to be absorbed by the image sensor. Then the shutter closes allowing it to take the next picture. When recording video, these pictures are taken so quickly that your brain perceives them as fluid, but a movie camera, camcorder, or security camera are all just taking rapid pictures.

The shutter in a camera controls how long the camera requires to take a picture, though faster doesn't mean better. The faster a camera shutter opens and closes, the more likely that you will get a clear, blur-free image. The longer that the shutter is open, the more light is let in and the better the image will be in low light. Shutters that are open for an extremely long time allow the taking of color pictures at night/twilight without having to switch to infrared mode, but will cause motion blur.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to any situation. This is especially true when trying to record license plates because of both a fast-moving object (the car) and the need for detail in low-light situations.

All our cameras have adjustable shutter speeds, usually in a range between 1/30s to 1/100,000 of a second.