A miscellany of photography with digital, analogue and alternative processes, including cyanotype.
The Victure HC200 Trail Camera
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The most recent addition to my camera armoury is the Victure HC200 Trail Camera, at a special offer price of just £39 this seemed well worth trying.
Victure HC200 Trail Cam
What you get is a robust unit with waterproof IP66 camouflage effect finish. It can shoot stills as 12mp jpeg and shoots video at 1080HD (in AVI format). It has a PIR type movement sensor that triggers recording and can record at night using it's own inbuilt infrared lighting.
Side opening clips with lock option
Inside the display and control panel
Battery compartment, takes up to 8 AA cells
The instructions are not particularly clear but the camera operation is reasonably straightforward. First up is battery installation, it swallows 8 regular AA cells. It also needs a memory card and takes standard (UHS-I) SD cards up to 32Gb capacity, which can easily be formatted from the setup menu.
There are various configuration options; shoot stills and/or video, shoot one still at max res or shoot a short burst at lower res, set the length of the video clip, set the reset time etc. It takes a little practice (and luck) to get the camera well positioned, there is a test mode to help check the sensor field of detection but the camera has to be open if you want to see the camera view on the display, this can be awkward.
Stills shot of pine marten with plates of food
Stills shot of pine marten walking past
Stills shot triggered by a mouse
Stills shot in daylight, pine marten returns for last bite
For downloading the results the camera can be connected via a USB lead but seems to be very slow (like an old USB 1 type connection), taking the memory card out and using a card reader has given me much quicker downloads. Having a single still shot when movement is detected has only resulted in a few good shots however the video footage has proved better, capturing lots of activity. Here's some edited highlights:
Conclusions
This camera seems like very good value for money (even allowing for the cost of a memory card and a set of batteries). Battery life seems good, I'm still on my first set of batteries and the camera has been left out for about 8 nights so far. It's relatively easy to setup and start using it. It's sensitive enough to catch small movements, say from a mouse. The IR option allows it to record at night without lights which would likely disturb the animals being recorded. The camera can also be used for security, it has the option to be mounted and can have an external power supply connected. Image quality is limited however this is not trying to capture award winning wildlife photos like you might with a DSLR, instead this is all about discovering what is out there.
Pros
Very good value for money.
Easy to use.
Waterproof, robust.
Captures lots of images you would likely otherwise miss.
The Raw Image Extension adds native viewing support for images captured in raw file formats and allows you to see thumbnails in Explorer without needing to open them with additional software. RAW Image Extension from Microsoft This is very easy to setup and free, from Windows desktop run the Microsoft Store , go to Apps and search for "Raw Image Extension". Under "System requirements" it should state if your device is suitable for installation and if so then just install (needs to be Windows 11 or one of the more recent versions of Windows 10). NB Although this installs like an App it does not run as an App, it will run in the background, just use the Windows File Explorer to see thumbnails and view metadata. It uses the LibRAW Image Decoder, a list of supported cameras can be found here: https://www.libraw.org/supported-cameras
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Trigger time is 5 to 10 seconds. Is there a reset? it was advertised as trigger time .5 seconds.
ReplyDeleteThey quote "Triggering Time: approx. 0.7 seconds", I guess you could experiment to see what the real world times typically are.
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