Salford City Council in Greater Manchester has installed Hikvision Darkfighter cameras, which are providing crystal clear night-time images , and the Council is upgrading to Hikvision cameras wherever there is a failure with a legacy camera. Recently the opportunity arose for Salford Council to use one of the first 4K Smart IR PTZ cameras available in the UK.

Councillor David Lancaster, Lead Member for Environment and Community Safety, explains that the new camera is leading the way both in terms of performance and helping the Council manage budget reductions. 

"Over the last five years Salford City Council has seen its government funding reduce by 40%. We're having to manage that as well as helping combat crime, and the CCTV cameras are invaluable - as well as helping to detect missing people who might be vulnerable," he says. "With this technology we can reduce the number of cameras we use, requiring less capital but still getting the same results. In one instance, for example, we were able to decommission a camera which had developed a fault; instead of repairing or replacing it, we upgraded the other camera covering that street to a Hikvision IP model. That camera, courtesy of its Darkfighter technology and 23x zoom, can now see the full length of that road. We never would have been able to do that with the old technology. We have a number of strategic vantage points, provided courtesy of high rise housing blocks. These blocks are located in most of our wards, and being 13 storeys or so high they give us a very good view of the surrounding area."

One of these rooftops is located in East Salford, where local residents have complained about the use of off-road motorbikes travelling at excessive speed, with very little regard for pedestrian or vehicle safety. Previous cameras used on that high-rise rooftop struggled to obtain clear facial images of the riders.

Councillor Lancaster says: "When Hikvision announced that they had released a 4K PTZ camera, we immediately thought it was an ideal opportunity for us to try it in this location. Our CCTV operators were blown away by it. With this camera's 8 megapixel image they can now clearly see the full length of that road, which they have never been able to do before. The field of view on this camera is in excess of half a mile. Not only can operators get that increased distance, they can now achieve facial detection of people riding motorbikes at speed, as well as reading vehicle registration numbers."

The camera has been an immediate success, capturing clear facial images of a recent off-road motorbike offender - images which have been provided to Greater Manchester Police, who are now taking action against the offender.

The camera is a Hikvision DS-2DF8836IV-AELW model, which features 4K 8 megapixel (4096 x 2160) resolution, 36x optical zoom, Smart Suite analytics, Smart tracking, Smart recording, 200m infrared range, and an in-built wiper function.

"With the previous camera we had installed there, the image went to black and white around 11pm at night," he says. "With this new camera, the images stay full colour at all hours of the day and night. And that is despite the camera being 13 storeys up. We can't quite get our heads round how this camera can still record full colour images in very low light conditions. The result is that we're getting clear images day and night and are able to give the police even better information to help them locate offenders and missing persons. The image quality is now phenomenal."

Salford City Council's intention is to continue standardising on Hikvision cameras, replacing those that fail as needed.