Trail cameras

[RogerS]

Has anyone got one of these or looked into them? Initial research suggests that water ingress can be a problem with some, that setting up the motion detection can be iffy and one or two other gremlins.

If anyone has got one that they'd be willing to loan out/hire out for short period I'd be very interested.

 

[Paul200]

Hi Roger. We have a Bushnell HD camera that, weirdly, we were talking about yesterday. Being nature lovers we treated ourselves to one about 18 months ago, just about the same time as we turned our lives upside down by selling up and heading up here to Scotland! So we haven't used it properly yet, but the few times we did set it up it worked fine.

We're going to use it to see if we can spot grey squirrels. We live in a red squirrel stronghold but greys have been seen so everyone's on the lookout and we thought the camera might help. Before you ask - it records in colour and black and white - although you can tell them apart without colour.

Won't be any help to you now but I'll report back.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Wildman]

I have a cheapo one I find the 8 batteries need charging every day, it really need connecting to a decent car battery. No been bothered by water ingress as I housed it in a security mount anyway. pictures are excellent. I bought it as a security camera as much as watching wildlife.

 

[dickm]

Son-in-law has one for their business (mainly checking for badger activity) so it has to work reliably for several days. Can check with him which one they have if it's any help.

 

[RogerS]

Son-in-law has one for their business (mainly checking for badger activity) so it has to work reliably for several days. Can check with him which one they have if it's any help.

That would be great, thanks.

 

[themackay]

I bought a couple from Lidl a couple of month ago about £60 each have not used outside yet used them to film the mice in my workshop which seemed to be avoiding my traps worked ok

 

[Paul200]

I've had a proper look at our camera now. It's a Bushnell Trophy Cam HD Max. 8mp. It takes 12 AA size batteries and they recommend standard alkaline batteries because rechargeables don't supply the correct voltage and can cause problems. Bushnell claim that these 12 batteries will last 12 months in normal use. Obviously this depends on how often the camera is tripped, but that sounds pretty good to me! You can also just load 4 batteries if you want - it just won't function for as long as 12 would.

I can't see water ingress being a problem - it has a heavy looking seal and sturdy catches on a case that overlaps itself when closed. The only downside is that it cost us over £200 a couple of years ago. We went for Bushnell after we'd spied them being used on nature programmes on TV - what's good enough for them .......

Intend to set it up in the wood today and will report back.

Paul

 

[duncanh]

We use them regularly at work, usually leaving them out for about a week at a time. Bushnell I think.
No problems with water or battery life.

No real problems with them, although you sometimes need to turn the sensitivity down as sun reflecting on water/vegetation can trigger the motion sensor.

 

[Paul200]

Me reporting back. We left our camera strapped to a tree with just four batteries (rechargeables - despite the warnings) for 2 days. The results were good at 5mp (you can choose between 3, 5 and 8mp) but I can't share the clips on here because the files are too large (had this problem with photographs too). Viewing the clips is simplicity itself - extract the SD card and put it in your laptop. No need to dismount the camera.

In terms of performance I can't fault it but I second duncanh's comments about foliage and the sun setting it off. The battery charge was down to about half capacity after 48 hours - but because of it's siting it was tripped nearly 90 times for 10 second bursts - and remember that rechargeable batteries are not recommended. We've learned from this and have now set it up on our summer house decking (where we've seen squirrels chasing around) with it's back to the sun and no foliage to distract it.

I think, as with almost everything, you get what you pay for. I would recommend the Bushnell cameras but with the proviso that I've no experience of any others.

Just a shame I can't post cute squirrel vids on here

 

[RogerS]

....

Just a shame I can't post cute squirrel vids on here

You could upload them to Dropbox and post the link here.

Thanks for the feedback, BTW, very helpful.

 

[Paul200]

You're welcome Roger

You've reminded me that I had an old Photobucket account that I no longer use (I don't really 'do' computers) so I've loaded 3 clips on there if you want to have a look. Quality isn't brilliant but that's more to do with me not knowing how the thing works - I've learned a lot and hopefully the next lot will be miles better.

Try these:


(Click on the left and right arrows to see the others)

The mistakes I made are not setting a longer time for the clip to run (you can choose from 1 second to 60) and choosing 5mp instead of 8 - I've rectified this now and await the next batch with interest.

Cheers

Paul