Trail camera advice needed

[Mombazza]

Here are a selectiion of my images.

[dampflippers]

Those are great photos, but your cam must have a flash. I think I would prefer one with Infra red so as not to startle the animals.

[Mombazza]

With infrared you only get black and white images and video that isn't brilliant at night. These cameras emit infrared light but it's still clearly visible. I have seen fox freaked by it. I must say in the hundreds of flash pictures I have taken no animals appear startled, however they sometimes give the impression they have heard the camera 'click' even though we can't hear the camera operate. I have a cuddeback no flash and the video and night time pictures show what's there but wouldn't win any photo' competitions. I prefer the flash option on this particular model.

[Mombazza]

The images certainly are of high quality and it's good to see that better cameras are becoming available in the uk. There's great potential for discovering more of britain's hidden wildlife with these cameras and sharing them with others. Have you considered setting up such a site?

[dampflippers]

I bought a cheap second hand Leaf River trail cam. It's a bit hit and miss as to whether it picks things up, but it is fun as an entry level one just to see if anything's there.
I probably wouldn't buy a new one of these though.

[Mombazza]

I've got a leaf river and like you say hit and miss. The date time function has failed but in the right temperatures the trigger is fast. Still worth using, as it could record something worth investigating further with a higher qaulity camera

[Nelbert]

Hi, I have been using a GL80 from George and Li International. At first it was a little tricky to set up but after a little tinkering I managed to catch a nice selection of footage. I use mine for video only as the night photos are too bright because of the power of the infra red lights. However they have just brought out a 10 megapixel version that you can adjust the ISO setting on, so hopefully that should fix the problem. I have some wonderful Badger Cub footage that is on youtube (YouTube - New Little Buddies.AVI) The quality is not fantastic because its on done by infrared and the videos can only be 2 minutes but the videos can follow back to back with the right settings. I hope this is helpful to you.

[Words]

Nice footage Nelbert. I'm actually using the GL80 as well, and pretty much only for IR video (of foxes, though I do get an occasional badger).

[Ecofreak]

Dont buy a GL80, we have 3 of them and they have poor resolution video, IR illumination and poor quality stills, battery life is appalling, they are more like toys really. To add insult to injury George and Li international give you a different cam from their advert, give false info on their website on down time between videos. Trading standards couldnt help as cams bought for commercial purposes.

Stealthcam, I have 3 of these, battery life is poor, trigger time is slowish and they are prone to false triggers. Very unreliable, 2 broke down.

Moultrie IR 40 is our star camera, good quality videos amazing battery life and extremely reliable in temps down as low as -15. They carried on recording though Xmas when we were snowed off the site for 2 weeks. Only prob for us is that default video at night is 5 seconds, also a minute downtime between videos which again is a downer for our purposes.

Spypoints (IRA) also good, battery life excellent and good quality video but prone to false triggers, we had 8 spypoints (2 nicked), the more recent models have covert IR which should be better. Otters, foxes and badgers are aware of the cams, but not bothered, have had an otter curl up and fall asleep in front of the Moultrie. Bought through camera shop uk, both them and Thomas jacks very good at after sales service.

All above use IR at night, covert IR now available and that is what we will be going for with our replacement cameras.

Hope this helps.