Best wildlife camera to use?

[Colin A]

I am afraid to say the cheap cameras are very poor and unreliable, as I know to my cost. Having tried various makes and type of cameras around £50 or so, all of which failed at some point for various reasons, I bought a Browning BTC-7e and use it with rechargeable Energizer batteries. I have had it for around a year now and it hasn’t skipped a beat. During the winter the batteries struggle but a fully charged set will get you through the coldest nights. During the summer (when of course there is much more activity) I change them around every five nights. Buying a charger and two sets of batteries means you can aways have a set fully charged ready to go.

This camera has sat out in the extremes of weather, first, rain, snow, hail etc. and just keeps working.

I use it on a small tripod and set it up to record from around two hours before sunset and finish about 8am. If you are in a quiet location it is surprising at this time of year with short nights how much activity there is during daylight/dusk, especially the breeding females.

I have sat out all night recording activity and then checked the camera to see if it ties up with what I saw, so i was confident i wasn’t missing anything and the triggers etc. are set correctly.

Admittedly this is not a cheap option and is a reasonable outlay but well worth it in the long run.

Colin.

[Wiltshire Garden Wildlife]

There is obviously a distinct difference in our experiences, Colin. I found the particular model of cheap camera that I use to be really quite reliable. The only failure I have had is after a fox decided to chew one! It is certainly true that the more expensive cameras are more robust. I have a Browning that I use for some purposes as it has a much narrower field of view. However, the six T20s I use capture the majority of the footage I take.

Cameras are nothing more than tools to carry out a task, and if you’ve found the tool that works for your needs, that is excellent. However, different people will have varying circumstances that they want a camera for. Hence trying to put together some videos that bring together questions that are worth asking when thinking of buying and operating wildlife cameras.

[Author]

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