br549 wrote:reible wrote:So what do you think of the new trail camera?
Very cool! We do some light duty bird watching of some yellow crowned night herons nesting in one of our trees. Our watching is sporadic and therefore only occasionally catch the best action, such as feeding time. Can you tell us more about your camera? Brand, type, how is it activated (motion sensor?), outdoor/weatherproof?, memory, resolution/record modes, works in how low of a light level, etc.
This is my third camera of this type. I've only purchased cheaper model since they can crash, vanish, and all seem to have some good things about them and some bad things.
My first camera stopped taking pictures at night, then for some odd reason started again. Hard to trust but it has been working for quite a while again. It doesn't have audio and it has very bright IR so it tends to wash out images of things. You also can not preview what will be in the shots so it matter of guessing that you have it pointed where you want it.
I got a second camera which has a view screen and a remote. It also has audio but with an annoying built in sound, what's with that??? It also has their logo on every video frame, like free advertising but annoying to me. You also have to have the remote to use it.... so if you don't have it you can do nothing with the camera.
This new camera has power levels for the IR, that was a selling point for me. And with each camera the resolution has gone up. There are good and bad points to that. I should mention the camera does have lower resolution but for me I want the higher resulting. This camera also saves the file as .avi files and the 30 second clips I take produce a file of 149K each. So like I said there are trade offs.
The new camera also has some oddities. For some unknown reason the first video is always ****057, why is that??? It also seems to stop taking video on me the first day, at ***256. That is a flag to me, like maybe a firmware problem? Anyway I would not buy this camera again just because of this.
Now in general, these cameras are made to be outside, they are called trail or sometimes game cameras and of course you can use them in your back yard too. They take a memory card, I use 32GB cards but some can use larger cards. They have a bunch of set up features, way to many to list here but they can do videos and take pictures and do time lapse etc, and some times a mix and match of those.
Some of the cameras have usb ports so you can attach to a computer or laptop to view the images or is you have a card reader you can see the pictures that way and of course save those you want.
All of these cameras have both a heat and movement sensors. Most have at least three settings since things like blowing grass, branches and the like will trigger it and you don't want a bunch of videos with just that.
Most of these have "black" IR leds for the night vision so you don't see the lights being on and I guess the subjects don't either. Some camera give you the option of daytime only, night time only or both. My new one doesn't have this option........ wish it did.
Most of them run off batteries, all the ones I have use 8 AA, this newest camera says you can use LI but I have not tried that yet. Depending on how much recording it does will determine battery life. Most have an off switch, the new camera does not...... you have to pop the battery cover to power it totally off, another negative to me.
Anyway that is a starting point so now you can go to Amazon or where even and do some reading and decide if you want to pop for one.