Fit-for-purpose? Discussing the take-up of megapixel cameras, Joel White, senior product manager at American Dynamics – part of Tyco Security Products – reveals that currently the bulk of installed cameras are in the 2 megapixel range. White stresses that even with the prospect of enhanced resolution coming on stream, in the guise of 8-megapixel cameras, everything still has to lead back to a solution’s ultimate goal: "When you think about it video surveillance solutions are really targeting a specific purpose, every camera in that system is delivering video to meet that goal and resolution is only one part of that equation."

Ultimately, White believes, that it comes down to the actual ‘use case’: "What is my deployment situation? What do I need to extract out of the video?"

White goes on to say that across the security industry, sadly, there still remains an obsession with ‘big numbers’ and ‘nice specs’: "This provides more business and people kind of get glazed over and think that bigger is better, which is not always the case. For everything there is a trade-off."

He warns, for instance, that although there are many high resolution cameras out there offering 3, 5 or even higher megapixels very few, in his experience, come with high quality lenses rated above 3 megapixels. […]