CCTV Camera Placement: 10 Rules for Useful Footage

Why placement matters more than price

The most common complaint we hear about existing CCTV is "it recorded the incident, but you can’t see who it was." Almost always the problem is placement — a camera too high, too far, facing into light, or watching the wrong spot. These ten rules fix most of it.

The 10 rules

• 1. Cover every entry and exit point first. Gates, doors, shutters, staircases and lift lobbies are where everyone must pass; a clear face here is worth more than any wide view.
• 2. Give each camera one job. Decide whether it must identify faces, observe activity or simply detect movement — then choose the lens and position for that job.
• 3. Mount at about 2.5 to 3 metres for faces. Higher cameras see the tops of heads and caps. Out of reach but not looking straight down.
• 4. Keep the angle shallow. A camera looking down at more than about 15–30 degrees loses faces. Aim at the point where people walk towards it.
• 5. Avoid shooting into bright light. A camera inside a dark corridor looking at a sunlit door sees only silhouettes. Place it to look along the light, or use a camera with strong WDR.
• 6. Overlap your views. Make sure a person leaving one camera’s view appears in the next, so you can follow movement around the site.
• 7. Protect the cameras. Mount them where they cannot easily be reached, turned or covered, and use vandal-resistant domes on low ceilings.
• 8. Think about night. Check what the scene looks like with no light, and add lighting or choose colour/dual-light cameras where needed.
• 9. Cover the valuables. Cash counters, stores, server rooms and dispatch bays each deserve their own clear view.
• 10. Respect privacy. Never point cameras into toilets, changing rooms or neighbours’ homes, and display CCTV notices.

Home placement checklist

• Main gate or compound entrance, aimed at the entry point.
• Front door, at face height distance — a video door phone can cover this too.
• Driveway and car parking.
• Back door, side passages and any ground-floor windows hidden from the road.
• Optional indoor cameras in the living area and entrance hallway — never bedrooms or bathrooms.

Business placement checklist

• Main gate, reception and every staff entrance.
• Cash counter or billing desk from above and in front.
• Stores, stock rooms, server room and high-value areas.
• Loading bays and dispatch, one camera per bay.
• Parking and compound, with the boundary wall for larger sites.
• Corridors and staircases that connect these areas.

Example: fixing a badly placed system

An office in Domlur had eight cameras that recorded plenty but identified no one. The entrance camera was 4 metres up looking down, so it saw the tops of heads; the reception camera faced the glass door and showed silhouettes; and the parking camera used a wide lens 25 metres from the gate. Moving the entrance camera to about 2.5 metres high, angling the reception camera across the doorway with WDR on, and replacing the parking camera with a narrower lens aimed at the gate made every view useful. No new cameras were added — only better placement.

Test before you finish

A good installer walks through each view with you at the end: someone walks in through the gate, stands at the counter, goes into the stores — and you check the footage. It is also worth checking the same views once after dark. Small adjustments at this stage make the difference between useful evidence and a blurry shape.

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