Ring 2 doorbell Night image too dark

The night image has deteriorated over time where very little is visible even with an outside light. The doorbell seldom defects motion at night also, even though motion is occurring. This doorbell is much more disappointing than the original Ring. There seem to be no settings to correct this issue.

Hey @Ruthenium. Could you show us a video example of this? Seeing what you are seeing can help us isolate what can be done to address this concern! :slight_smile:

I am having the same issue it started about 2 months ago. All the sudden you can’t see anything at night.
You can see the difference in the 2 pictures. I did not change any settings/lighting between the 2 pictures.
Thinking about switching to google nest hello doorbell.

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Hey @Lila459. I do see the slight adjustment to the view in this comparison, though such slight changes can occur due to exterior changes as well, most often and increase/decrease of external light. This can happen when there is a cloudy night, full moon, and so on when another night may have a different lighting. In addition, it looks like in one of the views your view is horizontal and the other is vertical, creating more of the black contrast in the background over another. This high contrast my have one image look brighter than the other.

There is something you can do to try to see if you can improve the overall quality for the future though! Have you had the chance to try turning HDR on for your device to see if this brings more detail to your video consistently? This may help in your endeavor to ensure you have the best quality picture possible!

Hi Chelsea, thank you for your response. We have had the ring doorbell 2 since November of 2018. The night picture has always had slight issues with not having the greatest/brightest picture, but it wasn’t until the end of March or beginning of April 2020 that it became even darker and basically useless.
I do realize that one picture was snapped horizontal and one was vertical, but either way there is a difference in the lighting. Unfortunately, I cannot go back far enough on the cloud to show you when the camera has a better picture back in March.
I also understand that an increase/decrease of external light will affect the picture, but this has been a consistent problem for the past 2 months, regardless of the full moon or clouds. We even bought brighter light bulbs for the porch light which did absolutely nothing for the ring, just brought more bugs.
The HDR setting has always been turned on since we initially set up the ring doorbell.
Please help.

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@Lila459 Thanks for giving me that additional information! I wish I could also see what it looked like before to see this major difference, so my apologizes for not knowing what it once was. You may have to experiment with the video settings and the position of the Doorbell in this situation to see if you can improve the device’s video quality, if not, you may have to follow up with our support team if you find no improvement.

Please note that the HDR video feature was only released to the Ring Video Doorbell 2 a couple months ago, which would also be around the time you saw this change. You may have had your video quality affected if you have this feature enabled. If you can, please go into Device Settings > Video Settings, and see if HDR is enabled there. If it is, please see what the quality is when you disable this. If the setting is not enabled, please enable it and let me know if you see the quality improve.

In the event that you may see no improvement, it looks like the night vision is reflecting harshly against the wall to the left, which could be affecting the night vision’s ability to see further out since there is that bright light. This can be fixed and addressed with a corner kit for the Ring Video Doorbell 2. This corner kit will press the Doorbell’s view away from the wall, giving you more picture in all and this should improve the quality of the video. This can hopefully get you back to what you had in March. I recommend to purchase the corner kit from Amazon or Ring.com, as we both have 30 day money back returns on the products purchased from here, and if you find no relief in the corner kit, can return for your money back.

I too have had issues for a while with darkness - it’s like ring is trying to get me to upgrade to the next doorbell - snide tactics - happened over night. I have just down graded £8 for 2 devices to £2.50 based on principle. Seriously considering scrapping all ring products. Spent over £250 plus all subscription fees. RING ALLOW MORE VIDEO ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS FOR RING DOOR BELL 2 IT ISNT DIFFICULT

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Please enable more video options on doorbell 2 - brightness and contrast for one!

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Hey @Bobbmcr. There’s a couple things you could do to improve the brightness of the image overall. Since it looks like with the IR filter on, the brick to the left is affecting the overall quality of the video. If you were to install a corner kit or two so that it points out more to the right, this should take the brick wall out of view and thus address this concern. From there, if you find it is still too dark, you may need more outside lighting on your porch in order to get this concern addressed.

Thanks, Chelsea. Here is a snapshot from a video at night. The video and image for the Ring 2 are disappointing at night compared to the original Ring doorbell we had. I attempted to upload a video saved from your application but the MP4 extension was not accepted.

I’m having the same issue all of a sudden.

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@Chelsea_Ring please see the image I uploaded yesterday. The deterioration I experienced began two to three months ago, probably with whatever software updates Ring rolled out to my Ring 2 device. Please tell all of us experiencing this issue that your software folks are being brought into the loop on this as well.

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Hey neighbors! @Ruthenium and @mkstretch, after reviewing your images and seeing you have the same concern, I have a similar solution for both of you. Since the image quality is distorted from the IR filter reflecting off of the wall, you will need to install one or two pieces from the Corner Kit for your Doorbell to get it pointed away from this wall and to help the IR filter ignore bouncing off of it. Once you put in a Corner Kit, as recommended I say use one or two pieces from the kit, let me know if this helps the image quality! You can purchase a Corner Kit for the Doorbell 2 here (more colors and different Corner Kits for the different type of Doorbell you have also found under Accessories at ring.com).

  • Thanks Chelsea. Looks like my image has improved.
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@mkstretch the improvement in your image is dramatic. What did you do to improve it?

I had same issue. I used corner kit from beginning. Sometimes it worked good but often got dark vision. If I turn on porch light, it’s good. But I don’t want turn on light all night long. (I used Ring doorbell pro)

Well that was short lived! It’s back to being dark again. I have had this door bell for almost 2yrs with no problems. Now this! Ridiculous! I got it for security and now it’s useless when I need it most!!

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Same here Mkstretch. Ring should develop software can control this issue. They should accept the reality the door bell button position like that is common.

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I suspect there is something going on with their software that has changed the sensitivity of the device. I also note that at night it does not detect movement as well as it does in the daytime. All these features they keep adding to the software may have compromised the video quality in some way, although it seems the camera itself is capable of good video at times.

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Chelsea, I don’t know why but I had one video tonight that was the quality I had originally at night. The second picture is like we saw originally - well lit. The first picture is how the view is most of the time now - too dark. The ambient lighting is the same for both pictures. What is causing this random operation of the camera?