trail cams

psstalking

Well-Known Member
Hi lads,

I am looking to buy a trail cam, can anyone give me factual advice please not the kind the web sites give to make you buy it.
it will be on site for ten days and i dont need it to send me the pictures. prefer colour.

paul,
 
I just bought a basic one off ebay , from america. £50 delivered and the results are exceptional. It is colour, 5mp and ir. I am so happy with it we now have 4, basically for the price of one locally. I had it out a couple of weeks ago, and managed some really good roe shots, i bought a 16gb micro chip for it, so will store literally thousands of shots, and a good bit of video. I have not used if for video yet but the stills are excellent.

You just set the date and time (very easy) and place it out, nothing clever to set up. It does not have a monitor, but the card can go into a phone or laptop to view the pictures. 2 were set up this afternoon, over a salt lick and some molasses, just to see what is about. The plan is to recover them in a week and see who has been about.

Dave
 
I have a LTL Acorn Ltl-5210A (12MP), I am very pleased with it. It has been in constant use for just under a year and has never let me down. I take stills and video. The battery life seems very good. Not sure how they compare in terms of cost as it was a gift. Glyn.
 
I run the same camera as Glyn and it is superb little thing easily lasts a couple of weeks if I can't get out to pick it up. Cost wise it came in at less than £120 absolute bargain!
 
LTL Acorn 5210a uses 8 AA rechargeable batteries,
12MP stills are good, video is OK too but not HD
lasts several weeks but i`m usually too eager to see the results .
940 NM IR illumination at night which is covert (B& W)
IMAG0080.jpg
 
I bought one a while back and for what it is worth my experiences went along these lines:

It came down to what the priorities are. In my case I was looking to watch sika on trails in relatively dense forestry and so I decided that a fast trigger time would be important to me and that pointed me at either the 2012 model year Bushnell or Reconyx. Reconyx are very expensive so that ruled them out.

As most photos seemed likely to be taken at night or in low light under canopy I also wanted decent flash range and this is often incompatible with so called "black flash." Many cameras use near infra-red and if you look closely when they trigger you can often see a red glow around the LEDs while other cameras use so called "black flash" which is further down the infra-red spectrum and so should be completely invisible to humans and deer. I wasn't too fussed about being totally invisible plus "black flash" also usually means more cash so I went with a near infra-red camera on the basis of lower cost and longer flash range. What I can tell you is that deer can easily see it and it does spook them. Now, sika are exceptionally wary deer and so it may not be a big issue with other deer but some sika will run from it while others will at the very least get a shock and become very cautious.

So, you need to consider what your priorities might be. Here are some example photos from my camera with some comments. Hopefully these might give you some idea as to what your priorities are and that, in turn, will lead you to a decision based on what cameras meet your demands:

This shows the fast trigger time, I was walking as fast as possible and as you can see the camera triggered just after I entered the frame:

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Again another example of why a fast trigger speed is useful. The camera is set to take a burst of 3 shots and this works well. This is a "transition" time photo taken when the camera has decided it is night time even when there is still a lot of ambient light about, some cameras give a total white out effect under these conditions but if you use the camera in forestry then you may find that it operates under "transition" levels of light for much of the day especially in winter:

EK000088.jpg


There is a deer in this photo, this shows the benefit of a good quality sensing system. From what I can establish many cameras don't have great sensing systems and so miss a lot of potential triggers - when you check the memory card you only see what they caught and don't get to see what they missed:

EK000100.jpg


This shot was taken a second after the first one and was the last shot of a 3 shot burst, just to show that there was actually a deer in the photo above. It also demonstrates the benefit of taking a 3 shot burst:

EK000102.jpg


This shot shows the decent flash range with this camera and you can also see that the hind is looking directly at the camera as it triggers:

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This was taken less than a second after the photo above and that blur in the frame is the hind clearing off at maximum speed. Not all reactions are like this by a long way and I think it was just unfortunate that she happened to be looking directly at the camera when the infra-red flash fired. The glow is pretty low level so usually if the deer aren't looking at it they don't notice. Another point is that when I run it in video mode the "flash" is on for the full 30 second video clip and so this gives a much longer time for the deer to spot something wrong.

EK000005-1.jpg


Even without the flash deer, certainly sika, spot the camera and they know that it is something new and are wary of it which is why I think the "black flash" is an advantage, but not an advantage I would pay for or trade off on other features to get as just the camera alone can be enough to put deer on their guard:

EK000020.jpg


You can see the flash reflecting in the eyes of this sika calf but because it wasn't looking directly at the camera and was distracted by something else there is no reaction at all to the flash and the deer goes about its business, again it is easy to see why a fast trigger is an advantage:

EK000007-1.jpg


Some of the daytime photos are nice, and the videos out of this camera are very good as well in my view and are something I've just started playing with. This hind and her calf messed about in front of the camera for some considerable time before going on their way:

EK000023.jpg
 
I think I'm in the minority as far as folks who mostly hunt whitetails in that I do not own or use a trail cam !

If I had a lease back out on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for Sika again I think I would get some trail cams if for no other reason then to let me know about trespassers !
 
thanks Caorach for taking the time to elucidate

as regards tresspassers, you need to be careful where you site your trail cam
as they will be a target for thieves and vandals.

trail cams are only a mid price investment but you can gain a lot of info
as regards your deer population and other creatures, and a lot of pleasure looking at the results.
 
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