What cameras are you using for LPR?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BST6GR4

Yes, you will need to spend about/at least an hour fine tuning the camera. Here are some general rules:

1. During the day:
   1. Aiming/mounting the camera in the direction you are most likely to see the plates. (I have two to get front & rear of vehicles)
   2. Zoom in as much as you can while still getting the area where you will see license plates plus some margin for error
   3. Have someone drive by a few times to ensure the stock daytime settings are good (I did not change nay daytime settings)
2. Twilight hours:
   1. About an hour before sunset my cameras switch from daytime to night time as the reduced sunlight and some people's vehicles having daytime running lights make getting good plate images/video difficult in color.
   2. The infrared LEDs come on and the manual shutter speed on my cameras change to 1/10,000th of a second just at sunset.
   3. The cameras go back to daytime mode 30-45 minutes after sunrise

I have to manually change the timings a few times a year, and I check the cameras footage several times a week. I wish there was a way to automate these settings, but that's beyond my level of expertise and it doesn't take long to do.

Finally you will have a LOT of settings for the cameras, but you really just need to set the zoom & focus during the day, then adjust the LEDs and shutter speed at night. While leaving everything stock/auto during the day works well, IME it fails horribly at night.

EDIT: "Low light" processing for license plates isn't real. The photos you see online showing off license plates at night in color are either parked or photoshopped. The police do not need to see the color of the license plate, so even though it is really interesting how these cameras can make an entire scene appear to be day light, when to your eye it's obviously night time, this setting will never capture/resolve a license plate on a moving vehicle with headlights/brake lights. IMO, the starlight/low light abilities of the camera are pointless in a LPR camera.

Good luck!