Ever want to make a camera less visible, hide it from view, be  discrete? For example,  maybe condo rules prohibit you 

from having a camera, or you want cameras in your home, but you don’t want them to stick out for aesthetic reasons. 

The Hikvision  DS-2CD6412FWD-30  may be  for you. The  camera electronics are in a box about 4 x 3″ and 1 1/4″ tall, 

the camera itself is about  2″ long. While the concept is not new, the Axis P12 has been out about year, but the price 

point makes this an affordable choice.

Main Features

1. 1280 x 960 resolution (1.3MP)

2. Electronic Day/Night

3. 120dB WDR

4. Micro SD/SDXC, up to 64GB

5. video streams

6. Hallway mode

7. Motion, Face, Line Traversal detection

8. Alarm I/O

9. Audio Mic In/Line In (3.5mm jack)

10. Audio Line Out (3.5mm jack)

11. PoE or 12VDC

12. Working Temperature (-22F to 140F)

What comes in the box is the camera electronics in a small black box with  jacks  for Ethernet, 12V, audio, alarm and

the camera.  The camera itself is on a 25′ wire with an RJ12 plug. Also in the box is 2 different types of rings to hold 

the camera,  one  with  camera  tripod  threads and a wall/ceiling mount. There’s also a quick release bracket to hold 

the camera electronics in place.

The idea is you mount the electronics out of the way where  it’s  not seen.Then you mount the camera which is the 

sensor & lens where needed.This camera came with the 2.8mm so it provided a really nice wide view.If you mounted 

it in a door, it would not look out of place as it would look like a peep hole. Indoors you could mount by drilling a hole 

in drywall and all you would see is about 1″circle.You could even reduce the visible part to just the lens which is about 

1/3″ in diameter. If it’s being used  in a home with aesthetics in mind, this is one of the smallest cameras available and 

can be mounted flush with the wall.

This is the initial screen when you log into the camera.What this camera adds over non-audio cameras is audio controls 

for volume at the bottom. To use the audio feature, you would have to buy a microphone and/or amplified speaker.

By clicking on the Configuration tab and then Network menu under Advanced Configuration on the left, you can set

the IP address for your home network. You can use the included SADP  program  to find the camera initially and set 

the IP address to something suitable for your home network.

The Video/Audio menu is where you can set video and audio options. In the first tab, Video, you can set the resolution, 

frame rate, compression, i-frame and such.

The Audio menu item shows your options for the microphone and encoding choices. Most important is the volume. 

I had to set it fairly high to get the sensitivity I wanted.

You control the image options in the Image menu option. It has a list of categories on the right with choices when you

 click on the category. The first one is Image Adjustments and lets you set the brightness and  contrast and such. I left 

everything at factory defaults but set sharpness down a little as sharpening artifacts can be distracting to me.

Indoors, if you have some high contrast, like a bright window area, you have two choices. If the window overwhelms 

the image  and makes  it seem dark, consider using  the Backlight Settings where you can use backlight compensation 

(BLC) or wide dynamic range (WDR) to  adjust the  picture  to your  liking. This  camera  has  wider than normal WDR 

because it’s primarily designed to be used in kiosks, like a ATM machine where the person is outdoors and may be very

 brightly backlit.

In the Image Enhancement category, you have several options.  I typically set noise reduction on Hikvision cameras to 

100 with no ill effect but in this camera, doing so makes things quite blurry at night, so I would recommend 50. Defog 

mode is new and was not able to try it, but the idea is that if the scene is foggy or hazy, it will clear up the image. EIS 

stands for Electronic Image Stabilization and this would come in handy if the camera is mounted in a moving object, for 

example, in a bus, the camera can correct for camera shake.

I used the in-camera recording feature to record the videos used here. I inserted a microSD card in the slot and went 

to Advanced Configuration, Storage, Storage Management to format the card. Then I went to schedule and set it to 

record 24/7 on video motion detection.

There are several choices for triggering recording. You can trigger are recording using the alarm input by wiring an 

alarm devices like a pressure sensitive matt, PIR motion detector, but in this case  I  setup  video motion  detection. 

You basically draw the area you want to check for motion and enable it. If you are recording to SD card, you check

the box that says Trigger Channel. There’s an “Expert” mode that has offers more options.

In addition to video motion detection, you can enable audio motion detection that listens on an external microphone 

for noise.  Sometimes  this  is more useful in cases where  the  camera  can’t  see what it going on yet, but can hear 

the noise and start recording mainly for the audio.

Face  Detection  is  a new  feature for Hikvision cameras and is available on this model with it’s 5.1 firmware release. It 

detects the precense of faces and you can trigger it to send an email or FTP if a face is detected. There’s no provision 

to record to SD based on Face Detection.

Another alternative to video motion detection is to trigger recording based on someone crossing a line, either in a 

single direction  or  bi-directionally. This  would  be  useful in recoding  when  someone enters a building or exits a 

building or car crosses a threshold.

If you set everything up correctly, the camera should start recording video when motion  is  detected. If you recorded 

to the SD card,  you’ll see events denoted by a red lines on the timeline of the Playback tab. You can slide the timeline

to the time you want to look at it, use the calendar on the right to select a date, and use the  plus/minus signs on the 

right  side  of the timeline  to  adjust how much time  to display at once on the timeline.This is an actual recording that 

was captured when a car drove by.

To export video, click on the small filmstrip looking icon  just above the  timeline on the right. You select the start and 

end time you want to search for and it will display  a list of clips  to  export to your PC. You have to export entire clips 

and it writes them by default to your c:/users/yourname/Web/DownloadedFiles directory by date. It could be me, but 

I found exporting video did not work with IE 11 and had to use Firefox to export files.

Images

Now onto the images. I mounted the camera with the 2.8mm wide angle lens in the usual spot, under the eave of my 

garage. As before, you can click on the image to see the full size 1.3 megapixel image straight from the camera. Also as 

before,  I  set  the  max  exposure  time  to  1/30th  which  is a good compromise between low light performance and 

movement.This is a day shot with taken in the harsher afternoon light with  the sun towards the camera and the image 

held up very well.

At dusk, the colors get more intense, but the image looks well balanced. The noise reduction is showing some signs in 

the tree and grass. I had noise reduction set on the high side which does this.

At night, in B&W mode, the image looks quite good considering there’s no IR, it’s just the ambient light from the 

street light across the street and 2 9W LED bulbs in porch lights by my garage door.

But it does not matter if the image is B&W or color as this camera has “Electronic Day/Night” meaning it does not 

have a mechanical IR cut filter.This is the same shot taken in color and as you can see,not much difference in the 

brightness of  objects. This  camera  does  very well in low light, better than the 3MP cameras if you turn their IR 

LEDs off. In this image, I set noise  reduction  to  50 which was the best compromise of reducing noise while not 

blurring everything.

If you set noise reduction at 100 like I’ve recommended on Hikvision cameras before, you get a pretty blurry image. 

Can’t even read the license plate numbers.

The other extreme is setting noise reduction to zero. You get a pretty noisy image but sharper detail. You have to 

experiment to see what works best for your situation.

I  did  not  bother putting the camera at the  back of my house with is total darkness because this camera does not

have an IR illuminator  or  is  even  IR sensitive at night, it would just be black. If you use this camera, make sure you 

have enough light,  but  not  much  is  needed  to  get  superb  results. Just  so  you  know how I mounted this by 

my garage, I used the included wall mount bracket and worked pretty well.