Hi Coley, regarding instructions, each camera will be a little different. What I can do is go through what I would do with a new camera. Apologies if this brings the phrase “Grandmother sucking eggs” to mind!
The main things will be:
Date and Time: I use 24hr clock but set to suit. Worth noting that some cameras lose the Date and Time setting when the batteries are removed from the camera (for re-charging or replacement). This will then affect any time related setting such as Recording time and Time stamp etc. Two cameras I have retain the Date/time and one does not which is a bit of a pain.
Video or photo or both: I just have video only and set to the highest quality. If taking photos, you can select the quality i.e. 3MP, 5MP 12MP etc. Similar, for video you can change the resolution and frame rate, but why would you want to set a lower quality?
PIR Sensitivity – I generally leave as default but you can usually set to High/Med/Low to suit your needs. This would determine how far away the sensor reacts to movement. If you are recording Hedgehogs then in reality Med/Low would be best. You can also have the side PIR sensors on or off. I leave them on.
Audio – I have this ON but to be honest none of the cameras are good at recording audio in my opinion.
Video Length – You can set how long each clip lasts for after the PIR is activated. A personal choice, I tend to set it to between 30-45secs.
Shot Lag – This is the period the camera is essentially off for after taking a clip. Without any shot lag the camera would be constantly on if there was any activity in PIR range. Pros – You will not miss anything. Cons – You will have hours of video to go through and the batteries will run out much faster. Also, if you select no lag, ensure you have a reasonable size memory card inserted as video takes a lot of memory.
Recording Time – The camera can be ‘active’ all the time or can be set to record only at certain times. For hedgehogs I set the timer according to the time of year, i.e. to when it is dark. So, in the summer it might be 21:00-06:00 and winter might be 16:00-07:00, but set as you like.
Time stamp – I set to ON so that the recordings show date/time/ temp etc.
All the cameras I use have a three-position switch which is OFF/TEST/ON in that order. You start by switching to TEST which is where you use the Menu and various buttons to set the camera up as above. When all the functions are set up you switch it to ON position and after about 10-15 secs delay the camera will become active and record according to how it has been set up.
If you want to review any clips in camera you switch back to TEST and use the Replay button or whatever the camera has in place for this. I never use this as I daily take the SD cards out of the cameras and insert into my PC to view the previous night’s antics.
Cameras will take either SD cards or micro SD cards. I buy micro SD cards as they can be used for both types of slot by using the Micro card and an SD card adapter if required.
