A camera that can tell you someone is there at forty metres may not be able to tell you who they are at five. How far a camera actually works is fixed by arithmetic, not by the number on the box, and it decides whether your footage is evidence or wallpaper.
Pricing agreed before we start. We usually reply the same day.
Every camera is sold on its resolution, and resolution on its own tells you nothing. Those pixels get spread across whatever the lens can see, so the question is never how many the sensor has. It is how many land on a person standing where you care about.
There is an Australian standard that puts numbers on this. AS/NZS 62676.4:2020 sets a scale of performance in pixels per metre across the scene. Four points on it matter for a house: detect at 25, meaning you can tell someone is there; observe at 62.5, meaning you can count them and describe their clothing; recognise at 125, meaning you can tell whether it is someone you have seen before; and identify at 250, meaning you can say who it is.
Worth knowing before anyone quotes you: the international committee replaced that edition in 2025 and raised the identification threshold to 500 pixels per metre, on the view that 250 was optimistic once low light and compression were allowed for. Australia has not adopted it yet. We design to 250 as the floor and 500 where the identification has to hold up.
The arithmetic is simple. The scene gets wider in proportion to distance, so pixel density falls at the same rate, which makes the four distances multiples of each other. Whatever camera you buy, detect is ten times as far as identify, observe four times, recognise twice.
Work it through for the specification most residential quotes default to, a 4 megapixel camera at 2688 pixels across, on a 2.8 mm lens covering roughly 100 degrees. It identifies a face to about 4.5 metres, recognises a familiar one to 9, observes to 18 and detects to 45. At the point where it stops being able to identify anyone, the scene it is looking at is 10.8 metres wide. That is the whole front of an average house in one frame, and nobody in it is identifiable.
None of that means the camera is bad. It means one camera does one job, and which job is decided before you buy it.
Three sensors behind the same 100 degree field of view, in the same position, differing only in pixel count. Drawn to scale, and real cameras vary a few degrees either way.
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What it means: going from 1080p to 4K is four times the pixels, four times the storage and roughly twice the distance, because distance scales with the number of pixels across the frame rather than with megapixels. That is a real gain and a modest one. The useful takeaway is the position of the front door: at 4 metres a 1080p sensor behind this lens cannot identify the person standing at it, and both of the others can. Move the same 4K camera to cover the driveway instead and it stops identifying anyone before the car.
One warning about datasheets. The detect, observe, recognise and identify distances manufacturers print are usually longer than the standard's own maths gives for the same camera. We checked one popular 4 megapixel model: the published identify range was 6.3 metres, and applying 250 pixels per metre to that camera's own stated 97 degree field of view gives 4.8. Wide CCTV lenses have significant barrel distortion, so they take in more angle than a simple projection suggests, and the extra is squeezed into the edges of the frame, which is exactly where you cannot identify anybody.
Treat a datasheet range as the optimistic end. Where the number matters, and on a front door it does, work it out from the pixel count and the field of view instead.
Most of these get settled at the quoting stage, which is why the quoting stage is worth doing properly.
The same 4 megapixel camera on a 4 mm lens, which covers 79 to 84 degrees depending on the model, identifies to roughly 6 metres instead of 4.5, because the pixels are spread across a narrower scene. A 6 mm lens narrows it again to around half the angle of a 2.8.
The cost is coverage. Narrow lenses see further and less, which is why a driveway wants one narrow camera aimed along it rather than a wide one pointed at all of it.
Where a 4K sensor is physically the same size as a 1080p one, each pixel has about a quarter of the area to collect light with, worth roughly 6 decibels of signal to noise. Plenty of 4K cameras use a larger sensor and give some of that back.
In daylight it does not matter. At 2am in a side passage it does, which is why a well chosen 4 megapixel camera often beats a cheap 4K one on the footage you actually needed.
Infrared intensity falls with the square of the distance to the subject: four times as far is a sixteenth of the light on a face. A person reflects only a fraction of it, and dark clothing far less than skin. There is also no common test method behind a published infrared range, so the numbers are not comparable between brands.
Wide lenses can make it worse. If the infrared array is beamed narrower than the lens sees, the middle of the frame washes out and the corners go dark, so on a wide camera it is worth checking the stated infrared angle against the lens angle.
At around 4 megabits a second per camera, the figure manufacturers publish for 4 megapixel H.265 at 25 frames a second, four cameras recording continuously fill a 2 terabyte drive in about 11 days and a 4 terabyte drive in about 23. The same four in 4K halve that again.
Dropping to 12 or 15 frames a second roughly doubles those figures, and recording on motion stretches them several times further on a quiet frontage. Neither choice is wrong. Making it deliberately is the point.
The standard makes the design obvious once you accept it. Put a camera close to each place a person has to stand still, at head height, aimed at the face: the front door, the side gate, the garage door. That is where identification happens.
Then use one wide camera for context and stop expecting it to do both jobs. A single camera on a corner of the house, covering everything, reliably produces footage of an unidentifiable person doing something you could already guess at.
Start by throwing out the scare line. Break and enter into NSW dwellings is not surging. In the twelve months to March 2026 the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research recorded 17,999 incidents, a rate of 212.3 per 100,000, which it classes as stable over two years and falling 5.3 per cent a year over ten. Greater Sydney sits well below the state at 150.4. Two property offences do have a rising decade trend: steal from retail store, up 3.2 per cent a year, and motor vehicle theft, up 1.1. Those are a genuine argument for a camera on the shop counter and one on the driveway, and not for much else.
Next, the deterrence claim. The security industry likes to say most burglars avoid houses with cameras. That figure comes from a 2012 University of North Carolina study funded by the alarm industry, and its headline numbers are about alarms rather than cameras. The nearest Australian evidence is a 2012 Institute of Criminology survey of 69 detainees in Western Australia who had burgled that year: 61 per cent said a dog put them off, 49 per cent a working alarm, 23 per cent sensor lights. Cameras were not among the options offered, so it says nothing either way about them. It does say two thirds got in through a door or window that was not locked.
So we would rather sell you what cameras demonstrably do. In 2019 the Institute of Criminology matched more than 20,000 criminal matters on the NSW rail network: where police requested footage, 24.8 per cent were solved against 21.0 per cent where they did not, rising to 27.2 against 22.8 where footage was provided. For theft and burglary the improvement was 6.7 percentage points, a 63 per cent relative increase. That is a professionally maintained rail system rather than a driveway, so read it as the ceiling rather than the average.
And here is the finding this entire page exists because of. In a survey of 146 NSW Police investigators who had requested footage, nine in ten used what they were given, but one in three reported at least one problem with it, most often image quality or coverage. Cameras that are present are not automatically cameras that resolve what you needed.
That is the case. Cameras are not a fence and they are not a dog. They are an evidence system, and an evidence system that cannot resolve a face is just an expense.
General guidance rather than legal advice, and worth reading before the cameras go up rather than after.
Audio is the one that catches people out
Section 7 of the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 makes it an offence to knowingly use a listening device to overhear or record a private conversation you are not a party to, and also to record one you are a party to, unless every party consents or the recording is reasonably necessary to protect your lawful interests. The maximum for an individual is 100 penalty units, currently $11,000, or five years imprisonment, or both, and 500 penalty units for a company.
Most consumer cameras record audio by default, and one near a front fence or a shared path picks up talk that has nothing to do with you. Not all of it counts as a private conversation, since the Act excludes talk the speakers ought reasonably to expect might be overheard, but that is a thin thing to rely on.
Turn audio off unless you have a specific reason for it. It is a menu item. It does not make the video side risk-free: section 8 carries the same maximum, and section 11 penalises publishing footage obtained in breach of the Act.
Pointing is not the offence. Installing can be
Section 8 of the same Act is about how the camera got there, not what it can see. It bites where installing the device involved entering someone's premises, or interfering with their vehicle, without consent. A camera on your own wall, on your own land, is not caught by it, even where the view takes in the footpath or part of a neighbour's yard.
A camera you fix to a shared fence, a neighbour's wall or strata common property is a different matter entirely. So is what you point it at: deliberately filming into a bathroom or bedroom can engage sections 91K, 91L and 547C of the Crimes Act 1900, and sustained camera-watching of a neighbour can amount to stalking or intimidation and support an apprehended personal violence order.
Since June 2025 a neighbour can sue
A statutory tort of serious invasion of privacy, in Schedule 2 to the Privacy Act 1988, commenced on 10 June 2025. It covers intrusion upon seclusion as well as misuse of information, and an individual can sue an individual or a business, which is how it reaches a domestic camera when the older privacy laws never did. It is not a low bar: the invasion has to be intentional or reckless and serious, and the court weighs privacy against public interests that expressly include crime prevention.
The practical response is aim and mask: point cameras at your own entry points, and use the privacy masking built into most recorders to black out a neighbour's windows and private yard. Five minutes at commissioning.
Staff change the rules completely
If the premises are a workplace, the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 applies. Camera surveillance of employees needs at least 14 days written notice, setting out the kind of surveillance, how it will be done, when it starts, whether it is continuous or intermittent, and whether it is ongoing or for a set period. An employee can agree to less, and anyone starting after the cameras are running needs notice before their first day. Cameras have to be clearly visible, with signs at every entrance to the place being watched.
Covert surveillance of staff needs an authority from a Magistrate. This is the actual source of the signage rule people repeat about homes, and it is a workplace rule.
In strata, common property is not yours to drill
Fixing cameras and cabling to external walls, lobbies or car parks alters common property, which needs a special resolution of the owners corporation under section 108 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015. The resolution has to say who maintains the equipment, and if that is the lot owner the scheme must get their written consent and make a by-law. NCAT has ordered a lot owner's cameras removed from common property.
A camera wholly inside your own lot avoids that. Anything past the threshold is a scheme decision, and our strata electrical page covers that side of it.
Electrical work is done to AS/NZS 3000 and certified. Where a job includes electrical work we lodge a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work within 7 days of testing, which since 1 July 2026 goes through the BCNSW eCert portal.
Cameras are cabled and powered over Ethernet rather than run on wi-fi and plugpacks. The cabling is structured data cable, installed and tested to the customer cabling rules with power and data properly separated. Cable choice, distance limits and power over Ethernet budgets are on our data cabling page.
We quote coverage rather than camera count. That means a position, a lens and the distance at which each camera meets each level of the standard, so you can see before you spend what the system will actually resolve and where it will not.
The legal positions on this page are general guidance only and not legal advice. They are current as at August 2026. For your own situation, LawAccess NSW on 1300 888 529 and a solicitor are the right places to start. Note that the free Community Justice Centre mediation service closed in June 2025, so a neighbour dispute now means a private mediator, Legal Aid if you are eligible, or the Local Court.
Fewer than most quotes assume, in better places. A camera can only identify a face over a short distance, so identification has to happen where people stop and stand still: the front door, the side gate, the garage. That is two or three cameras at head height rather than one mounted high on a corner looking down. After that, one wide camera for context is usually enough. Six cameras all doing the wide job produce six recordings of an unidentifiable person.
Sometimes, and it buys less than the name suggests. Going from 1080p to 4K is four times the pixels but only about twice the distance, because reach scales with the pixels across the frame rather than with megapixels. It is also four times the storage, so you keep about a quarter as long on the same drive, and where the 4K sensor is physically the same size each pixel has less light to work with at night. On a long driveway or a shopfront it earns its money. On a front door a 4 megapixel camera already identifies everyone who stands there.
Incidentally, yes. Section 8 of the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 is about installing a device somewhere you had no right to be, not about what the lens takes in, so a camera on your own wall that sees the footpath or part of a neighbour's yard is not caught by it. That is not the same as no offence at all: deliberately filming into a bathroom or bedroom can engage sections 91K, 91L and 547C of the Crimes Act 1900, and sustained camera-watching of a neighbour can amount to stalking or intimidation. Since 10 June 2025 a statutory tort of serious invasion of privacy also lets a neighbour sue, though they would have to show the intrusion was deliberate or reckless and serious. Aim at your own entry points and use the recorder's privacy masking. This is general guidance and not legal advice.
Most record audio by default, and it is the part nobody thinks about. Section 7 of the Surveillance Devices Act 2007 makes it an offence to knowingly use a listening device to overhear or record a private conversation you are not a party to, and also to record one you are a party to unless everyone consents or it is reasonably necessary to protect your lawful interests. The maximum for an individual is 100 penalty units, currently $11,000, or five years imprisonment, or both. Not everything picked up near a fence will count as a private conversation, but that is a thin thing to rely on. Unless you have a reason for audio, turn it off. This is general guidance and not legal advice.
At around 4 megabits a second per camera, which is what manufacturers publish for 4 megapixel H.265 at 25 frames a second, four cameras recording around the clock fill a 2 terabyte drive in about 11 days and a 4 terabyte drive in about 23. The same four in 4K roughly halve that. Dropping to 12 or 15 frames a second roughly doubles it, and recording on motion stretches it several times further on a quiet frontage. Surveillance-rated drives are worth the small premium: they are built for a constant write load rather than short bursts.
Cabled, for unglamorous reasons. A camera powered over its data cable has one cable to fail instead of a plugpack and a wireless link, keeps recording when the internet drops out, and does not need a power point under the eaves. Wireless has a place where running cable genuinely is not possible, such as a heritage facade or a detached shed, and it is a compromise rather than a preference.
Quite a lot, and in writing. The Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 requires at least 14 days written notice before camera surveillance of an employee starts, stating the kind of surveillance, how it will be carried out, when it begins, whether it is continuous or intermittent, and whether it is ongoing or for a set period. An employee can agree to a shorter period, and anyone starting after the cameras are running needs notice before their first day. Cameras must be clearly visible and signs up at each entrance. Change rooms and bathrooms are off limits, and covert surveillance of staff needs an authority from a Magistrate. This is general guidance and not legal advice.
Attending your job is a chargeable callout. We confirm what it costs when you book, and the price for the work itself is agreed before we start, so there are no surprises on the invoice.
Based in Castlecrag, covering all of Sydney. A few of the suburbs we work in most:
Related work: the cable and power over Ethernet side is data cabling, outdoor cameras usually pair with sensor lights and flood lights, and a recorder plus a switch running around the clock is worth putting behind surge protection. For apartment blocks and common property, see strata electrical. See the full list of locations we service.
Upfront pricing, with the price agreed before we start. We will work out what each position can actually resolve before anything is bought.
