So my old trusty cuddeback captures are finally starting break down and im on the market for a few new cameras. For the price the Stealthcam g42 seems like a great option. Who has one, and what are your "likes" and "dislikes"? I'm open to other recommendations also!
I really like mine so far. Very good day pictures. Night pics are so so. Battery life is also good. I'd buy another.
I dislike that I don't have more than one The biggest issue is that the LEDs are powerful, so if you are used to having to put your cam right on a game trail to get a good night time shot, that's simply not the case. You can set it back off the trail and get good light coverage. If you have it too close, you'll get flash burnout. The cam is top notch though. Mines been working like a champ! and a video for good measure... [video=youtube_share;hGKe7kRt5P8]http://youtu.be/hGKe7kRt5P8[/video]
Mine have been super good cameras as well. Night time pics aren't stellar but really decent...daytime pics make up for anything the night pics lack. Mine have been super dependable and battery life set in pic mode has been really good. I only recently got several pics with a burnout issue from a new set.
Just bought 2 of these myself and put them out last week to check on turkey activity, can't wait to see how the pics turned out.
Day pictures are excellent. Night pictures are fair to poor. Some are reporting severe burn on night pictures. I had to cover most of the LED's on my G42 to tone down the severe burn I was getting. Not great battery life in my opinion.
Not impressed with battery life either 2 months is all I got on photo 4 shot 5 second. Only reason I still have it is, it takes very good closeup shots that most other cameras don't.
Battery life using Ray O Vac's and Energizers with my three G42's is not good at all but I use mine for videos only plus cold weather seemed to zapped them even more so I use 12v externals along with the internals and they would last about a month getting around 1500-2000 videos. Also a 15 second video uses right at 50mb of card space when set to 1280 X 720 which is way more than any other cams I've used . I hoped they have changed that for 2015 but I have my doubts.
That's a lot of videos for any camera - especially in cold weather using Alkalines. 1 night time video clip is using up 5-10x the amount of juice as a set of 3 images since the flash bulbs have to stay on the entire length of the video. I ran 3 or 4 G42s with lithiums in them for nearly an entire year on picture mode without any issues. I switched one of them to video mode a few times during the rut which ran the batteries down a bit but they still made it into mid or late February before giving up. My only complaint on the G42 was some of the burn that others noticed and some of the night time images were a bit on the fuzzy side. The burn issue seemed to be fixed, or at least made better, by a firmware update during the season. Before I deploy cameras again this summer I'll be sure they're updated again and see how things go. For the price I think the G Series has performed really well and was a HUGE step forward for Stealth Cam. I'm anxious to test some of the new 2015 units when they hit the shelves.
Most definitely the best camera for the $99 I paid for mine. I had some older Stealths and they were absolutely horrible on batteries and the pics weren't much to brag about. I'll probably swap over to photos with the Stealths to save battery life and use my Bushnells for videos.
Just ordered two of these cameras the other day. Will be my first cameras that aren't Moultries. A lot of reassuring comments and pics. Can't wait to get them out and see for myself.
For anyone interested, the G42NG's are being sold on ebay right now for $99 shipped if you buy two or more cams. These also come with a 2 year warranty. I picked a few up today....for this kind of $$$ it was kind of hard to settle for more G30's. Stealth Cam STC G42NG No Glo Infrared Scouting 10MP Deer Trail Game Camera | eBay
