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Hi all
I want to buy a wildlife camera as a present for my partner. The kind of thing that detects movement at night and films animals. And I wondered where I can find a bunch of geeks likely to have opinions on such stuff. So, here I am!
These things seem to vary wildly in price, from £20 to £300.
Goal is to capture photos/video of nighttime wildlife that visits her allotment. Doesn't have to be super high quality, as she won't be broadcasting/editing, etc. It's just for her own interest.
Wifi not needed, as this will be out of range of our house.
What do I need to know? How much do I need to spend to get something that's not rubbish, but not over the top?
Cheers!
Clive
Be aware in allotment of capturing other people (permission?) at the allotment and other 'night time activities'.
I say that as someone who helped on a 'wildlife camera' project which supplied cameras for schools to pop in local woodland and parks. Let's just say the teacher *had* to review what footage was captured before the children needed an explanation that doggy wasn't just referring to the pawed variety...
We spent about £70 on one from Amazon for similar purposes in our back garden. We've got LOTS of footage of pigeons, cats and rats, and quite a bit of nothing at all (whatever triggered it must have gone out of shot before it fired up the recording) but have equally got plenty of footage of foxes, hedgehogs and badgers.
it looks almost exactly like this one, though page no longer exists for the exact model I bought
I also bought a set of eneloop batteries and a charger. a set of 8*aa eneloop batteries will last for a couple of weeks easily - I set it to record from just before it goes dark to just after it gets light - the camera has built in wifi so you install an app on your phone, connect to the camera wifi network (which sets date and tmie etc) then set recording "windows" as approriate. You can also use the app to review recordings, rather than plugging the card into a reader (though that is faster of course).
you'll also need a suitable card to record on too of course
We started out with a cheapo ltl acorn one, it was OK but the trigger was a bit slow and the image quality wasn't great. We now have a Browning something or other which has a night lens and a day lens - image quality is so much better and it reacts quickly. Also has the option to do a burst mode where it keeps snapping every second or so while there's movement.
Tldr - you sort of get what you pay for.
I bought my Mum a Browning Recon Force Elite HP4, which was good enough for me to buy myself one 9 months later.
https://shop.naturespy.org/products/browning-recon-force-elite-hp4-wildlife-camera-btc-7e-hp4
Out of stock there.
Simple enough for a 70+ year old, rechargeable batteries seem to last well too. I went with Browning as it's a proper brand rather than a "insert random generic maker on Amazon".