Trail Cameras

All of our trail cameras are suitable for, and very good at, recording all types of wildlife in your garden. We recommend using a standard lens trail camera rather than a wide angle lens model unless you have a very large open area that you are looking to cover like a double driveway for example.

Also think about how much infrared power you require as too much can mean white out problems with your night vision images and videos. The Ltl Acorn range of wildlife trail cameras all have an infrared brightness adjustment feature which means you can easily adjust the infrared power to suit the scene.

The Ltl Acorn 5210A is a popular choice as it’s the lowest price of the range but the Ltl Acorn 6210MC PLUS is more robust and more weatherproof meaning that it should last longer. The Ltl Acorn Mini30 offers the best image/video quality of the range and there is even a Mini30 version which will allow colour night vision recording too if that is something you’re interested in.

All trail cameras or wildlife cameras have infrared built in for night vision. The “best” does not always mean the most powerful as it depends upon how close the subject is to the camera when recording and so the “best” option is very much down to your own planned camera location, what wildlife you think you’ll be recording and how close to the camera that wildlife might be.

Look for trail cameras with adjustable infrared power settings such as the Ltl Acorn trail camera range.

To send pictures to your phone directly from a trail camera you would need a cellular trail camera. Some cellular trail cameras come already set up with a SIM card built in and pre-configured. This means that there is very little for you to do when your new camera arrives other than install the relevant app on your smart phone. This type of cellular trail camera, such as the Vosker V100 4G or the Spypoint Link Micro 4G LTE come with a certain amount of free images per month, usually 100. If you want more images than that sent to your phone on a monthly basis then you would sign up for a larger tariff with Vosker or Spypoint.

Other cellular trail cameras such as the Ltl Acorn 6210MG PLUS would require you to get your own SIM card and configure the camera yourself. Not always that easy for the first time user to make sure that you buy from a reputable company that offer good support for this.

Yes, trail cameras are often used for security surveillance purposes. They are portable and completely cable free, so ideal for fly tipping and anti social behaviour hot spots. They are very often use by local councils for these purposes.

Trail cameras are also often used as security cameras to cover yards, warehouses, stock rooms and other areas in which running a cabled CCTV system may not be viable.

Trail cameras with wide angle lenses can be very useful for covering large outdoor yards and stock areas such as garden centres and builders merchants etc.

This is an interesting question as you’ll often hear very high numbers, in relation to megapixels, quoted by trail camera manufacturers. However, the key number is the actual image sensor size. This, and the quality of the components used, are the real players in how good the recorded images/video will turn out.

To get a better understanding it is worth noting that 1MegaPixel is comprised of 1 Million Pixels.

A pixel is basically a tiny dot, so millions of these will make up the total image. Generally the more pixels the better the image quality especially if you’re zooming in on a particular area within the image.

For example, a trail camera may have a 12MP image setting resolution option but only have a 5MP image sensor.

So if you set a trail camera to take an image at a 12MP resolution but it actually uses a 5MP image sensor then the image will be made up of 5 million true pixels and the other 7 million will be predicted pixels (the camera will predict the correct colour of those pixels or dots). This predicting of pixels is known as interpolation.

These interpolated images can still be very good but not always as good as the real thing, so look out for a cameras actual image sensor size and think about choosing the actual image sensor MP setting when deciding on which MP resolution to use from the camera set up menu perhaps.

I get asked this question at lot with regards to how long trail camera batteries actually last, and it’s always very difficult to answer where it depends upon many different variables such as:

• How many batteries are being used in the camera?
• Which type & brand of battery is being used?
• Is the camera set to record video or just capture still images?
• Is the camera recording a lot at night time when the more power hungry infrared is being used?
• If recording video, what video length have you set for each clip?
• Is the camera working in very low temperatures? (will use up more battery power in extreme temperatures)

These variables could mean your batteries might last anything from 4 days to 4 months!

In most cases in the modern world, wildlife cameras and trail cameras are both terms used for the devices we typically sell.

A wildlife camera could really be any camera that is set up to record wildlife and so could range from a standard CCTV camera to a nest box camera or a trail camera.  

Trail cameras were/are mainly designed and built specifically for the purpose of recording wildlife in remote locations where you can’t necessarily be 24 hours a day to take photographs or record video yourself.  Trail cameras do all of the work for you and you can just return at a later date and check the images and video that has been recorded.

Well with regards to a trail camera this is not easy.  It’s a portable device that you can take somewhere, set up and leave so there is no 100% foolproof way of stopping somebody else from walking up to a trail camera and taking it away with them.

You can buy security boxes with many trail cameras but maybe the thief would just take that too.  How you decide to fix the camera might help, so if fixed in a more permanent way it might take longer to steal and so be a deterrent.

Trail camera cases are generally camouflage affect to help them blend in with a woodland surrounding and so perhaps not be that easy to spot.  

You can set a password on many trail cameras that would prevent somebody else from using the camera going forward but it would not stop them removing the memory card and seeing what’s been recorded.  Only a trail camera with encryption would do this but it would still not prevent the camera from being stolen in the first place unfortunately.

No, in fact the vast majority of trail cameras on the market today don’t have WiFi.  

A WiFi enabled trail camera may allow you to get close to the camera and then view recorded images/video via an app on your mobile phone without actually touching the camera, so could be useful in some applications such as when a trail camera has been positioned high in a tree to monitor nesting birds perhaps.

The above is what WiFi trail cameras are currently intended for but customers often ask me about WiFi trail cameras for viewing live video.  From the WiFi models I’ve seen so far this is not a technology that is ready just yet and they have not been designed for live viewing for any lengthy period of time.  Battery power is drained substantially when live viewing which in turn causes the wireless link to drop out or have problems.

This will depend upon which cellular trail camera you choose.  Some come with a set amount of free images per month.   These images will be sent to an app on your phone and then the camera will stop sending them once you’ve reached the free limit.  However, these camera manufacturers will offer you the option of increasing the amount of images you can receive and they have different monthly tariffs for this.

You can get an idea for these tariffs by looking at the Spypoint various monthly payment plans here:

https://www.spypoint.com/en/spypoint-experience/plans

Another cellular trail camera type would be a model in which you would insert your own PAYG SIM.  A 1pMobile SIM used in a Ltl Acorn 6210MG PLUS cellular camera might mean a rough cost of about £2.50 per month but no free image quota option.

I’m biased but yes, I think wildlife cameras offer fantastic value for money if you choose the right manufacturer and supplier!  To have camera lens, battery power, infrared night vision, on board recording, heat sensors & built in LCD screen all encased in a weatherproof shell is pretty impressive at the prices you will pay. 

The key thing is to buy from a reputable supplier with back up support and warranty support if required later!