Most disappointing camera systems weren't bad cameras. They were decent cameras pointed at the wrong things, mounted at the wrong height, or blinded by their own porch light. Placement decides whether your footage is evidence or wallpaper, and it's worth getting right before anyone drills a hole.
Here's how we think about it when we walk a property.
Cover the ways in, not the whole yard
The instinct is to cover as much area as possible. Resist it. Wide shots of a yard produce tiny, unidentifiable figures. What you actually want is clear coverage of the approaches: the front door, the driveway, the back or side door, and any gate or walkway people naturally use.
The front door and driveway matter most. Nearly everything that happens on a residential property, from deliveries to break-in attempts, starts at one of those two places. A camera that gets a clean, face-height view of someone walking up the front steps is worth three cameras watching empty lawn.
Back and side doors are the quiet second priority. They're where forced entry actually tends to happen, precisely because nobody is watching them.
Height: lower than you think
The classic mistake is mounting cameras at the peak of the second storey, where they're safe from tampering and can "see everything." What they mostly see is the tops of heads and hoods.
For identification, the sweet spot is roughly 8 to 10 feet up. High enough that it's not trivially reachable, low enough that faces are still faces. If you're worried about tampering at that height, remember that a properly recorded system has already captured the person before they touch anything, and the footage lives on a recorder inside the house, not in the camera.
Soffit mounting works well at typical bungalow and porch heights. On tall two-storey walls, come down the wall to the 9-foot range rather than tucking the camera under a 20-foot eave.
Watch the light, especially backlight
A camera pointed at a bright background will expose for the background and turn every person into a silhouette. Common versions of this: a camera inside a garage aimed at the bright doorway, a porch camera staring into the afternoon sun, or a driveway camera facing the street lamp.
Walk the sightline at different times of day before mounting. If the camera must face a bright direction, angle it slightly downward so the sky isn't in frame, and let the camera's dynamic range work with less contrast. In winter, remember snow: a white driveway in sun is a giant reflector, and a low January sun sits right in sightlines that were fine in summer.
Also mind your own lights at night. A floodlight mounted right beside a camera lights up snowflakes, rain and insects inches from the lens. Separate the light source from the camera by a few feet and both do their jobs better.
Keep neighbours (and the sidewalk) out of frame
In Ontario you're generally fine recording your own property, but aiming a camera into a neighbour's backyard, their windows, or across a shared fence line invites complaints and, in some situations, legal trouble. It's also just poor form.
Angle cameras to keep coverage on your property. Most modern systems let you draw privacy zones that black out portions of the frame, which is the polite fix when a good camera position unavoidably catches a slice of next door. If a camera covers the front of the house, catching the public sidewalk incidentally is normal; making the neighbour's living-room window the centre of frame is not.
Doorbell camera or soffit camera?
Video doorbells are excellent at one thing: a close, face-height view of whoever is standing at the door, plus two-way talk. If your main concern is deliveries and knowing who's knocking, a doorbell covers it.
What a doorbell doesn't do is cover the driveway, the approach, or anything more than a few metres out, and its recording usually depends on a subscription and a good Wi-Fi signal at the door. A wired soffit or wall camera on its own recorder gives you wider context, better night performance, and footage you own.
For most houses the honest answer is both: the doorbell for conversation and close-up identification, one or two fixed cameras for the driveway and approaches. They answer different questions.
Plan first, drill second
Before mounting anything, tape a camera (or just your phone on a bracket) in the proposed spot and look at the actual view for a day. You'll catch the backlit doorway, the shrub that blocks half the frame, and the angle that mostly films your own eavestrough. Ten minutes of checking saves re-drilling siding in February.
If you'd rather have the placement, cabling and recorder handled in one visit, our security camera installation service starts with exactly this kind of walk-around, and we're happy to talk through your property before you buy a single camera.
Cabling, networks, cameras, access control, smart homes, hosting and software for homes and small business across Southwestern Ontario. Twenty-plus years in the trade, and we still answer the phone.