Looking for camera / lighting suggestions

[ctfjr]

We live pretty much in the woods with plenty of assorted wildlife around. I would like to run 2 cat 5 (or 6) cables as well as a low voltage pair out to a couple of trees. I created a clearing of sorts near where we have foxes den every year. I want to focus, no pun intended, on the clearing as its a natural pathway for the animals - recently there has been a bear there and we have deer, turkeys and a fisher cat (I have never seen) as well as the occasional coyote.
So. . . I am looking for suggestions for a camera. I prefer a 4K but have been thinking about a 1080p with PTZ. For lighting I am planning on using the low voltage wires (probably 14ga) to power several IR lighting units to really illuminate the area. I could use some direction here also.

The one thing I am absolutely sure of is I'm not the first user on this forum to do this and your experiences / suggestions would be very helpful.

[Thixotropic]

A basic-but-usable PTZ dome-style camera will start around $100. Amazon has quite a few.

Make sure it's water resistant (at least IP66 or 67) and runs PoE so you don't have to run additional cables just for power.

If it's a large area you may want to consider an IR illuninator (which can also be powered off of a PoE cable).

Here are some to look at (note that not all are PTZ):

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=POE+PTZ+Dome+camera

We live pretty much in the woods with plenty of assorted wildlife around. I would like to run 2 cat 5 (or 6) cables as well as a low voltage pair out to a couple of trees. I created a clearing of sorts near where we have foxes den every year. I want to focus, no pun intended, on the clearing as its a natural pathway for the animals - recently there has been a bear there and we have deer, turkeys and a fisher cat (I have never seen) as well as the occasional coyote.
So. . . I am looking for suggestions for a camera. I prefer a 4K but have been thinking about a 1080p with PTZ. For lighting I am planning on using the low voltage wires (probably 14ga) to power several IR lighting units to really illuminate the area. I could use some direction here also.

The one thing I am absolutely sure of is I'm not the first user on this forum to do this and your experiences / suggestions would be very helpful.

[TimG]

I can't add much to this, other than to check the minimum illumination levels to compare the cameras. The difference between my old analogue D1 cameras and the Dahua starlight is literally night and day in the dark ! The old cameras can see what I can see. Nothing. The Dahua is still showing a colour picture ! I turned off the IR on the Dahua, so the dreaded spiders ignore it too.

This is the info for my IPC-HDW5231R-ZE

Minimum Illumination

0.006Lux/F1.6 ( Color,1/3s,30IRE)

0.05Lux/F1.6 ( Color,1/30s,30IRE)

0Lux/F1.6 (IR on)

[ctfjr]

Thank you very much - I'm really getting psyched to do this now that the leaves are all off the trees and the local wildlife is easy to see.

I have the spider issues with my 2 bullet cameras and plan on turning off the in camera IR and installing several separate lights to illuminate roughly a 50X50 foot area.

[LOOPYLOOP]

i have a blue tit clean the cobwebs off one of my cameras every few days, i don't know if it is after the spider or any flies on the web but i wish it would find the other cameras and give them a once over every so often.