Uniview costs little and does the job. The margin is in knowing where it falls short.

It has a complete catalogue —fixed, domes, motorised, panoramic, recorders and software— and it takes care that its equipment gets along with third party video software, which is what matters most when the camera is going to live inside somebody else's system.

What it puts first is the ratio between what it costs and what it does in a normal scene: a corridor, an industrial unit, a yard with light, the entrance to a residential block. There it gives results that five years ago asked for a considerably dearer range.

What it sacrifices is the top end and the backing. The upper range is less developed than in the big houses, and the spares stock and the local support are smaller, which matters on the day a particular unit has to be replaced in a hurry.

There are organisations with a policy of their own about where the manufacturer comes from, and it is not always written brand by brand: sometimes it covers a whole category. It is not a judgement of ours, it is a condition of the project, so it gets checked beforehand —purchasing, corporate security, legal, or the specification if there is a tender— and if it does not fit you change brand and carry on.

In installations with many points and uncomplicated scenes: residential blocks, offices, shops, industrial units with light, covered car parks, indoor entrances. It covers the whole place with a single brand and leaves money to put better equipment at the two or three points that genuinely ask for it.

And when the video software is already decided and comes from another house. Being a manufacturer that backs standards, it fits with no surprises, and on an extension that saves more time than any feature of the camera.

At the points where the image has to identify somebody or read a number plate, and in genuine backlight: a door with the sun straight in front, a loading bay between shade and sun, a night scene with no light of its own. There the difference between a mid range and a top one is no longer aesthetic, it is whether the image is any use.

Nor as the only brand of an installation that has to last many years with the same model available, nor on projects where the organisation's policy does not allow this origin. And not in installations with nobody to maintain them: that holds for all of them, but on the economy ranges it is paid for sooner.

The range with on-board analytics separates people and vehicles from the rest of the movement, counts line crossings and alerts on intrusion into zones. For a perimeter that already removes most of the alerts caused by shadows and branches, which is what makes somebody carry on attending to them in the third month.

The limit is the usual one plus one of its own: rules drawn over the image, the camera only sees its own field of view, and on the economy ranges the filtering is coarser, so it has to be adjusted patiently and promised for no more than it gives.

What comes now is a recommendation with an interest of our own, so it is declared: in the same house there is IRIS Neural, the NVMS from Infinity Neural, the other company in the group. It is our own product. We would rather you knew it by reading this line.

What it brings is what will not fit into a rule and the relation between cameras. They sit together well, and the other half is also true: in a yard with a night alert, the camera on its own does the job.

When the camera is cheap, the place matters more and not less. A well placed camera at three metres, with the light in its favour and the field of view on where what matters happens, gives useful images; the same camera at six metres, with the light behind it and half the scene empty, gives nothing. The angle, the height and the light decide for good what will be possible with that image, and they are decided in the project and not on the day of fitting.