For the third year in a row we've had some vandalism down at the beach club. We're thinking about putting in some security cameras. The one thing I can't find in the research I'm doing is anything about the viewing range of the cameras. Some of them will say you can identify a face -- and I think "Well shouldn't they all, or what's the point? -- but none of them say how close to the camera someone would need to be to get the face.

We've got two ways in. One is fairly constrained, so one camera could easily get anyone coming down that way. The other way in is the frontage on the beach. We're pretty sure kids have come down the beach and in the back way. Considering how wide the beach is, and how wide the frontage is, there's really no one spot I could point to and know I'll get a face. So what I think I need is something with a wide field of view and fairly high resolution so I can zoom in on one spot.

Does anyone have first-hand experience, or a source they can point me to that talks about the resolution of different systems?

Based on the quality of bank video shown on TV, I don't think you'll get what you want for a reasonable price just yet.

True. But I'm always seeing on TV shows that they can take that grainy stuff and "enhance" it until you can tell how many hours it's been since the guy shaved. TV wouldn't lie to us, would it?

I'm looking at something more like [link|http://www.homesecuritystore.com/ezStore123/DTProductZoom.asp?productID=1400|this]. I need something that will record through the night so we can play back if anything happened. I'd prefer wireless, but we'll probably have to run power to wherever we mount them anyway. And weatherproof is much more important anyway. At least one of these cameras will be right at the edge of Lake Erie. Not the most hospitable place to spend a winter.