I have about twelves cameras between V3s, V4s and Pam V3s,. I noticed they never recorded or show night vision in color, so my question is, is there a specific requirement for the cameras to record/show night in color? This just came to my attention only because by chance I saw night vision active in one of the V4s and that was for just a brief moment. I have them in automatic and I have tried switching the night vision on by hand and still I don’t get night vision in color at all. I attached a few pictures and a short video where it shows the V4 recording in color and Suddenly it goes to black and white.
When you have Night Vision Mode set to On, then your video is going to show real “night vision”, which gives you the greyscale images. This setting also allows you to toggle Night Vision IR Lights on or off if you want to provide more or less (or none) infrared illumination to the area.
Having Night Vision Mode set to Automatic also gives you the Night Vision IR Lights control, but instead of being in that mode full time the camera is going to try to determine which mode it should be in (i.e., night vision on or off) based on the available light that it can “see”.
If you set Night Vision Mode to Off, then the Night Vision IR Lights option disappears, because with this mode you’re essentially forcing the camera not to engage the IR filter, so the IR illumination isn’t helpful or necessary. This mode will try to use the camera’s “Starlight Sensor” to produce color images with whatever ambient light is available. That’s how Wyze’s “Color Night Vision” works.
That’s my understanding, anyway.
As I write this, the Forum is telling me that your video is still uploading, so I haven’t yet seen it, but I would guess from the description in your post that you had the camera set to Automatic at the time and that there was a change in the ambient lighting at some point during the video that triggered the change from “color night vision” to regular “night vision”.
I’d say there are two requirements:
Set Night Vision Mode to Off.
Provide adequate illumination for whatever environment you’re trying to capture in your video recordings. I don’t know what qualifies as “adequate”, and this may require some experimentation on your part.
But I thought the point was to have the color night vision capability where there is no artificial light. Night vision capabilities with whatever natural light was available. Where I have the cameras, I have birds and I don’t want to add artificial light as that would interfere with their regular sleeping cycle. The carena are in an outdoor shed and some are just in the open with whatever moon light is available and I never get color night vision no matter in which mode I put the cameras, manual or auto.
Wyze Cam Pan v3 is equipped with a starlight sensor that allows the camera to see color in extremely low light conditions, allowing you to see full color at night. It works best to use this feature in low light settings, by turning Night Vision off.
This topic might shed some light (pun intended) on the situation for you, as well:
When that available light is none (or close to it), then I don’t think “color night vision” is going to work. That’s when I would expect the camera to use regular IR-based night vision if Night Vision Mode is set to Automatic.
I understand your concern about the birds, and I think that’s completely valid. It’s actually really cool that you’re taking their health into consideration like this. If you really want color video, though, then I think it’s going to be necessary to increase the available light for whatever viewing area you’re trying to capture. It doesn’t even have to be a lot, based on my experience: With my Cam Pan v3s that I use indoors, I have regular plug-in night lights in that room that turn on (via smart plugs) and off based on routines that are tied to sunset and sunrise times at my location, and I’m pleased with the color views I get. That’s why I mentioned earlier that getting the color view might require you do experiment some with adding light to the scene. Barring that, you’re probably going to want to use the regular monochrome night vision, which actually looks pretty good based on the photos you shared.
That is not possible, the laws of physics prohibit it (unless you want a spotlight on all the time).
“Color night vision” is just a fancy phrase for a highly sensitive image sensor that needs less ambient light than traditional ones, basically like having a really slow shutter speed on a traditional film camera, overexposing the image. But it still needs some ambient light.
The amount of ambient light is often surprisingly low, lights coming out of house windows, a full moon, streetlights, etc are often enough to get a decent color image.
