I’m looking at Trail cams, and have seen a couple of reviews.
But I’m pretty clueless. Any advice on a good trail cam for less then $100 or maybe less than $150?
I like Browning from what I’ve seen (video and IR illumination so it doesn’t flash at night).
I’ll use it on some woods and farmland…as well as in my suburban back yard at times
I forget if my father has a Browning or a Moultrie but either way he’s happy with his purchase (it was in the $150 range if I remember right and does have IR). The images aren’t especially clear due to the long exposure time at night unless the animals are being perfectly still, but it certainly shows with enough clarity to tell if you’ve got a buck vs a doe (or fox, opossum, raccoon…or 3 raccoons haha). It captures to 50ft…true. But the animals back at 50ft will be difficult to make out. Animals in the 25 ft and under range are clear, though. Day shots are good, but it still fails to clearly catch a trotting fox, for instance. Has the normal time stamps, pretty simple. You can set the sensitivity and it seems to be excellent - it certainly shows almost all animals without many blowing leaf shots. Plenty of squirrels shot during the day. He tosses a few apples and other stuff on the ground about 25 ft from the camera so the deer have something to stop and munch on to get a good shot of them.
It does not come with batteries or a picture card so you will have to buy your own SD card. Include that in the cost. Since you’re only going for pictures, you can get a slow-speed one (marked with a 4 in a circle for instance - high speeds are 10 in a circle). He bought a 32GB card and even with 25 pictures taken a day it’ll probably take him two years before it gets close to full. So you don’t have to spend $40 on the best card out there or anything.
Essentially every day you want to check you just pop on out to your camera, take the card out, and take it back to your computer and look at what’s on it like any other camera card. Or you can use the screen on it, but it’s small and hard to see, so I recommend looking directly at the card data. Very easy to use, my father figured out 90% of it without needing help and he’s not very technologically literate.
Sorry for the slight hijack.
I have been thinking about getting a trail cam as well, but I think it’s kind of a unique situation.
I fly into a remote cabin once a year. I’d really like to setup a trail cam outside teh cabin looking at the lake, but I’d like it to take a couple of pictures a day at certain times (say 10:00AM, Noon and 2:00PM) for year. Then I’d like to create a time-lapsed video of the pictures.
Will a trail cam do something like this, or will it only “trigger” on movement? Also, how long do batteries last in one of these units? Is it feasible to expect them to last 365 days?
Thanks!
MtM
you might find a camera that would program for those three times in a day. or you might find a camera that does one shot per hour.
you might need a remote shutter camera and build a programmable timer for those three per day or one an hour timer.
lithium batteries might last depending on the camera and the batteries.