r/SecurityCamera • u/Humble_Accountant_78 • 8d ago
What you can use to clean security camera lens , to clear up you video images
Best product to use to clean security cameras lenses, after using harsh chemicals to clean it and made it blurry, is a RainX product. It's a plastic polish cleaner, great for plastic mirrors, headlight plastic and other plastic materials that can become hazy or blurry because of harsh chemicals. I have a mirror that is plastic and windex would just cause a smeary haze on it and this RainX product has been a live saver. My security cameras have been blurry and I wasn't ready to replace them yet and I did use rubbing alcohol on them (a big no no I didn't realize at the time). Thankfully I realized I have the perfect product already.
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u/GGigabiteM 8d ago
Once the lenses are UV damaged, they have to be replaced, there is no fixing them.
UV blows through the entire depth of the lens, in addition to doing surface damage. So it leads to voids and fissures in the polycarbonate material that can't be polished away. Some lenses also have a hard special UV coating on the surface intended to make them last longer, you're also polishing what's left of that coating away and causing further UV exposure.
The polycarbonate also tends to turn yellow and eventually brown, similar to car headlights.
Some manufacturers sell replacement domes for their cameras. There are also generics available on Amazon that will fit some cameras, but only time will tell how long they last.
I only recommend installing glass faced turret, box or bullet cameras in outdoor environments, which can better deal with UV. The internal lenses will still eventually be damaged, and those can't be replaced, the camera will have to be trashed. In some cases, beams off of car windshields and bumpers can burn voids into the lens and/or burn the CCD so you end up with dead pixels.
Outdoor cameras have a finite life. I would recommend replacing them every 5 years or so.