okay so today I'm doing something that I really enjoy doing and that's evaluating
a trail camera as you can see this is part of my collection of trail cameras
I spend a lot of money on cameras top left there I have my Bushnell nature view
cam probably my most expensive one but the one second from the right there
is what we're going to talk about today and it's a new camera and I'm comparing
it in probably unfairly with some of these higher end cameras they range
anywhere from 125 the Browning Strikeforce is 170 right now the
Bushnell lineup is about 125 unless of course you get that nature view here's a
spike that I like to put into a tree and mount my cameras on here
this is a Browning Strikeforce $170 I have a couple of these they're okay but
they won't take still images and video at the same time this is another of the
Browning lineup this one was 130 I believe Does okay but it has let me down
time and time again by not getting the animal that I was trying to get there's
the thing I'm not a deer hunter so I am actually looking for much smaller game
now the cameras that are split in half like this that's great because you can
look at that little viewfinder and you open up the bottom and you can see how
the camera is positioned and that is the same with this Victure HC600 this is
close-up on the outside here this camera is under $100 buy a lot in fact I think
right now while I'm producing this video sequence it is even on sale because
we're just about to go into Christmas here's the camera you can see the LEDs
it takes 8 AA batteries some of my other cameras take 12 you can also get a
12-volt DC adapter for AC current and you can run cables through the back and
strap it to a tree as I mentioned before I put those anchors on the side of the
tree and knotted on that because it's articulated that way and I can angle it
anywhere I want cable or the strap that comes with it through here on the back
has one locking clasp there on the left and that's because just the bottom opens
the top doesn't in this video I'm going to show you
demonstration of how it works date night shade Sun and I'm going to show you how
to set it up and go through the menus with you as well so when you open up the
bottom the weather sealing is pretty good it's a plastic housing as are all
the others the controls are pretty clear and again I'm going to demonstrate those
because we're gonna go through it takes an SD card and the maximum card is a 32
gig so that's what we're gonna use you also have a USB plug in here we're using
a SanDisk Extreme Pro 300 megabyte per second 32 gigabyte card we don't want
the card to be the choke point when it's loading videos for example and this
thing takes 1080p video the strap is included and this little mounting
hardware is also included I'm just not going to use that the battery
compartment comes right out also there's a quarter twenty thread here you can put
that on a standard tripod mount which is super convenient and you have all the
controls on the panel here you have videos stills and the battery
compartment comes out I like that it's easy to load some of my other cameras I
tell you what getting the batteries in and out is a huge pain we're also using
energizer ultimate lithium batteries they have the greatest cold-weather
performance and they'll last the longest in the past I've often used Eneloop AA
batteries that are rechargeable but I've stopped doing that for trail
cameras they just didn't last as long and they let me down also you can see on
the bottom there's that DC port when you push in your SD card it just locks in
and that's the closed position right there when it goes to take it out don't
just pull it give it a push and it'll bump back out for you this is the camera
I put a piece of white tape over the camera so that when I'm doing the screen
here I don't see myself and we're gonna turn it on now when we go from off to AIM
that's so that you can program the camera and hit the menu button over here
and we're gonna start with the mode I like dual mode and some of those other
cameras like that Browning Strikeforce you can't take Stills and video together
but with this camera you can so we're gonna do that and we're also going to
decide what size photos we're gonna have it says photo resolution it goes all the
way up to 20 megapixel images we're gonna do that because I'm testing
quality here the other thing is capture series how many images do we wanted to
shoot before it goes to video mode I like it to take two pictures so it'll
take two still images and then they'll start recording the video we're gonna go
all the way up to 1080p and these are stored in a file of avi which goes right
into Adobe Premiere Pro which I like some of my other cameras don't do it
what's the duration of the video I want we can go all the way up to ten minutes
on this thing that's ridiculous I'm gonna run it for
30 seconds because I just want to see what's running around I'm gonna use
this camera and I'm gonna test it on very small animals mice rats whatever's
going around we're gonna have it wait here about I think it should wait five
seconds maybe or ten between sequences so it'll take two still images make a
video wait ten seconds and then start again
I want the sensitivity to be high I'm after small mammals and that means any
tiny animal that moves it'll come on economic here which is a weird way to
phrase that but I assume that's the lowest brightness for the LED lights
here and it is a low glow night light that the animals are not supposed to see
you have a chance to do time-lapse you can set in a field have it take an
interval whether there's movement or not I leave that off time we're setting
instead of day and night modes this thing lets you set the hours you wanted
to come on and to turn off so that's kind of handy too camera name you can
name it timestamp I want that because primarily I just
want to see what the temperatures are I did not take the time to do the date and
everything right now temperature unit we're gonna go with Fahrenheit you have
the choice of Celsius there password don't put that in if you punch in a
password on this thing every time you turn it on you're gonna have to enter
the password I don't like that let's format the card always always when you
put a new card in click format formats it for the camera this slicks the card
now it's ready to take all the pictures and video we want you can also set all
the camera defaults by clicking default firmware you can click on that click on
the version and it will show us what current firmware version is you can go
to their website and see if that is current if there's an update you can
want to follow their instructions and download and install the camera update
but right now this one is up to date so that's it
we got the mode photo resolution capture series two stills one video and I'm
going to test this out first on small birds outside because I think that's a
great challenge and then we're gonna search for smaller mammals at night
inside my bee shed also go from the off position to on don't go from AIM to on if
you've programmed everything turn it off first then go to on also eject the
batteries if you're setting it somewhere for any length of time even in the off
position it's saying we use your batteries here we have strong contrast
video the sunlight is hitting this roosting box and small birds have
triggered the camera for this video sequence so this is pretty decent
remember we're at 1080p this thing only shoots at 30 frames per second that's
fine with me because the purpose of a game camera is
just so that you'll know what's out there so if this were a deer or
something you could definitely count the details get the markings count the
points on its antlers whatever you need to do and the small birds definitely
trigger the system here's a still shot the 20 megapixels still shot I'm showing
it to you reduced in size so it will fit this video format but that's a chickadee
on the landing board so and now we have another still there's a bird on the post
there flapping its wings so the wings are blurred so the trigger is a little
slow and we're in shade here with a high contrast bright sunlight in the
background so that's a pretty critical test for a camera and it captured a
pretty good plus you can hear the bird noises here wing flaps and things like
that it's a female Cardinal they're eating black oil sunflower seeds and
chickadees of course
now we're at nighttime in my be shed I took a beehive that had some frames in
it with wax and we're looking at little deer mice running around this thing
picked up on the movement of deer mice now they're about five feet away from
the camera now notice that it did blow them out a little bit I'd like to have
seen the illumination go lower than this but remember this is for hunters
primarily not for people like me who just want to know how many mice or rats
or squirrels or whatever I might be dealing with look off to the right there
there's a wagon wheel the mouse on it so it definitely triggered and got that
with that still shot this thing had zero Falls triggers look at that bee box news
a mouse right at the lower edge there and it's staring at the camera and it's
listening and its ears are perked forward I think the camera does make a
noise and I think that they can actually see a little illumination because that
Mouse is paying attention to it but pretty soon it just scampers back down
there and goes right back to the black of all sunflower seeds that I've put out
for it there it goes so probably if I set it further right now I thought I had a
rat there look how big that is it turns out to be a squirrel thank goodness but
at least I know I have in this be shed two deer mice and a squirrel so what do
we think of the camera I think for the price point and the features that it has
and the performance that it demonstrates this is an outstanding camera I would
definitely recommend it I'm going to put a link to it in the video description to
Amazon check it out for yourself under a hundred bucks unbeatable quality and
features for this price thanks for watching