Torchepot
Well-known member
Good to see a new Forum for Trail Cameras - it's been pretty quiet on that front for a while here.
I'm no expert but I've got the bug now and I'm really enjoying finding out what's visiting our garden after dark - it can be quite addictive!
I've recently bought the rather poetically named "Aggressor" as it gets good reviews from several suppliers and is one of the best selling no-glow cameras (and as I couldn't find one called "the bunny hugger").
I bought my camera from Naturespy and their customer service has really impressed me.
I won't repeat what has been said elsewhere already - Naturespy and Trailcampro have both done really detailed reviews.
Generally I agree with much of what's been written and the camera can produce impressive results, but I have found a couple of shortcomings.
I am only really interested in using the camera for night-time video and in this mode the camera eats batteries - if you have foxes or other wildlife triggering the camera many times a night you'll be spending a lot on batteries. This also means that the camera can't be left in the field for extended periods in video mode. Lithium cells last longest but they are more expensive and aren't rechargeable (I'm not happy throwing batteries away regularly).
The obvious solution is to use an external DC power supply, most Trail Cameras I've seen have this option. You just plug a big old SLA battery into the DC socket and the camera may well fill the SD card before it flattens the battery.
This is where this camera falls down - it does have an external DC socket but it's a non-standard plug and even if you can get one (or hack one) it doesn't appear to be compatible with most DC supplies. Bushnell are trying to force people to buy their dedicated solar panel which has the right plug but doesn't have much power reserve. There are also situations where you wouldn't want to use a solar panel anyway - like under the canopy or where you don't want to attract attention to the camera's location. Bushnell do not make an external DC supply for this camera (other than the solar panel).
The other option is to run a pair of wires from a DC supply to the internal battery compartment contacts.
This works OK but means that either a couple of holes have to be made in the casing (voiding the warranty) or the wires have to be shut in the door which means it's no longer weatherproof, neither of which are ideal!
The other shortcoming that is an issue with videos is the trigger speed, this is somewhere around two to three seconds so a fast moving animal will be long gone by the time the camera starts up. The trigger speed for stills however is one of the very fastest and there is a "hybrid" mode where the camera will take up to three stills followed by a video. This is a particularly power hungry mode though so until I can sort out the DC supply I've only used it a few times.
Summing up I feel that if your main interest is stills then it's hard to beat this camera, however for video there may be better options eg. the Browning Spec Ops Platinum which has a very fast video trigger, produces excellent videos and has a standard 12 DC supply jack.
I'm no expert but I've got the bug now and I'm really enjoying finding out what's visiting our garden after dark - it can be quite addictive!
I've recently bought the rather poetically named "Aggressor" as it gets good reviews from several suppliers and is one of the best selling no-glow cameras (and as I couldn't find one called "the bunny hugger").
I bought my camera from Naturespy and their customer service has really impressed me.
I won't repeat what has been said elsewhere already - Naturespy and Trailcampro have both done really detailed reviews.
Generally I agree with much of what's been written and the camera can produce impressive results, but I have found a couple of shortcomings.
I am only really interested in using the camera for night-time video and in this mode the camera eats batteries - if you have foxes or other wildlife triggering the camera many times a night you'll be spending a lot on batteries. This also means that the camera can't be left in the field for extended periods in video mode. Lithium cells last longest but they are more expensive and aren't rechargeable (I'm not happy throwing batteries away regularly).
The obvious solution is to use an external DC power supply, most Trail Cameras I've seen have this option. You just plug a big old SLA battery into the DC socket and the camera may well fill the SD card before it flattens the battery.
This is where this camera falls down - it does have an external DC socket but it's a non-standard plug and even if you can get one (or hack one) it doesn't appear to be compatible with most DC supplies. Bushnell are trying to force people to buy their dedicated solar panel which has the right plug but doesn't have much power reserve. There are also situations where you wouldn't want to use a solar panel anyway - like under the canopy or where you don't want to attract attention to the camera's location. Bushnell do not make an external DC supply for this camera (other than the solar panel).
The other option is to run a pair of wires from a DC supply to the internal battery compartment contacts.
This works OK but means that either a couple of holes have to be made in the casing (voiding the warranty) or the wires have to be shut in the door which means it's no longer weatherproof, neither of which are ideal!
The other shortcoming that is an issue with videos is the trigger speed, this is somewhere around two to three seconds so a fast moving animal will be long gone by the time the camera starts up. The trigger speed for stills however is one of the very fastest and there is a "hybrid" mode where the camera will take up to three stills followed by a video. This is a particularly power hungry mode though so until I can sort out the DC supply I've only used it a few times.
Summing up I feel that if your main interest is stills then it's hard to beat this camera, however for video there may be better options eg. the Browning Spec Ops Platinum which has a very fast video trigger, produces excellent videos and has a standard 12 DC supply jack.
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