Ok this is my first IR Digital Cam.. I am in a dillemma on what to do though? I have only had this cam in the woods twice. The first time I had it out overnight to check the 15 second video option. It took 16 Vids and all of them were at night except for one. The vids at night were a tad bit grainy but still good. The daytime vid was very good! I put the camera out last Monday and went to check it today. I had the cam setup to take 1Pic per minute. I had 1350 Pics on it! I went through all the pics and out of all the pics there may have been 10 at most that were blank and maybe another 15 that had bad lighting( I will include a pic of one of the bad lighting pics, but check out how quick the trigger speed seems in the pic, the deer looks to be in a dead run?) Overall I am VERY happy with the Pic quality, but then again I have nothing to compare them too?? NOW THE DILLEMMA........ While in the woods when I went to swap out the 4GB SD Card with another exact one the cam would not lock the card in place? I messed with it for well over an hour with 3 different cards and it would not allow any of them to lock in place? It seems that whatever latch/spring that holds it in place is broke? I called Cabelas and they are willing to refund my money or exchange my camera for the same one or any other one if I pay the difference! I dont know what to do, I like the size of the camera and pic quality of this camera, and also that it only uses AA Batteries but dont know if this was a fluke or if it will be an ongoing problem? I would like to take my chances with the same cam but hate to have to go through all this again?? What to do, What to do..?? Anyhow here are few pics.....
First off, thanks for posting! I have been curious about that cam for a while and have yet to find a review on it. The pictures seem to be of good quality, especially the IR night pictures. They aren't as grainy as my Moultrie D55IR. That being said if you are satisfied with the picture quality, size, setup of the camera I would opt to have Cabelas exchange it for another and see if you just got unlucky with a lemon. If the new one fails then you can always switch then.
Those are pretty good quality photos. One problem you always face with a lower priced camera is you might get a good one or you might not. If you can afford it, I think I would go with a little more expensive unit. It's no guarentee but usually the better companies stand behind their products a little more. Blessings.....Pastorjim
My IR moultrie takes great quality pics and vids, of course night time is a little worse as goes for all cameras. I would suggest maybe picking one of these up they are worth their weight in gold.
Very impressive quality and trigger speed from that camera. Thanks for taking the time to review for us. I have a friend that got the Moultrie I55 and broke the return spring for the SD card on his just putting the card in. However, his card stays in it just won't eject. He has to pull it out. As Pastorjim said, with the less expensive cameras you run the risk of getting a lemon moreso than with the higher priced cams. If you like it you could give it another shot, but I would make sure you could take that one back if a problem crops up too. Best of luck on whatever you decide.
pretty good picks for that cam. I have heard the same problem with other cheaper brand trail cameras, that the chip will not lock into place and then you talk to someone else that has the same camera, never has a problem with it. It's like hit or miss having problems with the lower end cameras, not to say the higher end cams can have malfunctions too!
Well i decided to just go ahead and try the same camera again. I will let you all know how it performs for me. Now hopefully they can just get me another one in the next few days so I can get it back out!
I've used this cam for some time now and it's the size that really attracted me, in conjunction with the long battery life. I was a skeptic at first but I have been pleasantly surprised by this cam. I have this little guy strapped to a tree with real-tree camo tape covering the body and a few twigs and foliage around it to really give it a natural unobtrusive look. And it seems to work well. Battery life is awesome - good news for those travel quite a distance to plant their cams or who just want the longevity. You don't have to worry about visiting the cam every weekend. There appears to be two versions of this cam out there; The first batch apparently has a poor firmware which had caused some issues. This was literally a "beta" release cam and unfortunately it got a bad rap by some of those who got their hands on it and decided to review it before it really had a chance to be refined. Now this newer version really addresses most, if not all of the major issues. I wish chasingame.com would pull this thing back into the lab and give it another test because all of the issues they seemed to experience are not present in my cam. So here we are, it's been over two months that it has been in the field, still going strong - just visiting to change memory cards and check the batteries. Still on the first set. Cheers, NB
**update** Sept 10 - Still on same set of batteries - a little bit of dirt on the lens and a few scratches on the case. Alll ok otherwise. Left it as it was.......
Final Report One last trip; Pulled the camera. Batteries were still strong enough to take daytime pictures but IR flash operations appear to have ceased. In all, I am TOTALLY impressed. It was the end of June when I parked this thing in the field. The camera was not exposed to a ton of activity, i.e. it was not taking hundreds of photos a day, rather it just sat perched over an area of interest and it has performed very well. This was using Energizer Lithium Ultimate batteries and a Sandisk 4gb SD card, photo mode, 3 shot burst, 3mp resolution.
Camera Stats Hi there; The Camera went out on June 27th. There were a total of 908 pics. The camera was pulled in on the 24th Nov As I mentioned, It was not in a high traffic area so we are not talking about hundreds of pics a day. NB
any more comments on this camera? i've got two and had them out about a month... i'm not really impressed with them... other than battery life... trigger seems to be less than 10'... i just don't get these cameras...
Tascos allow you to buy more then one cam and put them in more then one interesting arrea. Great for hunting!
Re: Tasco Review Check all the IR's on the front and make sure all of them are lit up when it's taken a video or photo. You should be able to see the dull red come from each LED in the emitter. It was noted that this was a problem with the initial assembly of some younger units. Only a portion of the LED's we activated. This might be the problem.
thanks for the reply.... yes all ir works... it seems the camera doesn't "wake up" all that well... it's like it gets stuck in the "sleep mode"... not really sure why that is... also i am running the lithium batteries as recommended..
