 |
| Coco Cam #1 (Foxelli cam) |
 |
| Coco Cam #2 (GardePro cam from same vantage point as Foxelli, w/o Info Strip) |
 |
| GardePro Cam With Info Strip |
I had high hopes for this new GardePro trail camera, and it is capable of capturing higher resolution images than my old Foxelli cams (which I bought in the summer of 2019; I'm not sure the company still sells trail cams).
On the plus side, the GardePro's nighttime flash doesn't blow out the subject, the low light capture is better, and it uses "no glow" LEDs instead of "low glow" LEDs. An interesting feature is the ability to set a different video capture length for daytime or nighttime. You can also set the camera's hours of operation.
The big disappointment, really, is that the field of view and image frame are so small compared to the Foxelli that the GardePro seems claustrophobic. To make it worse, the GardePro information strip takes up a significant amount of real estate within the frame, instead of being outside the frame. The info strip can be turned off, but then you have to go into the exif data of each image to find out the time and date it was made.
But getting back to the image size issue, a standard 35mm image size is 4 x 6 inches; the Foxelli compares at 4.5 x 6 (same as my smartphone); and the GardePro at relatively narrow 3.375 x 6.
I paid $67.88 for my A3 on Amazon and noticed that the same model was no longer available the day after mine arrived (although it still shows up on the manufacturer's web site). It has been replaced on Amazon by the A3S which lists for $94.99.
Of the five Foxelli cams I bought in 2019, only one still works perfectly. One was stolen, one was lost in a flood, one only works properly at night, and one stopped working altogether. I figured it was time to get a second cam, but if you've ever checked, you know there is a mind-boggling array of trail camera brands and models out there. The technology has definitely improved since 2019, though, so even a sub-$100 off-the-shelf trail cam like the GardePro A3 (voted Best Budget Cam by Popular Mechanics) is pretty decent.
The latest issue of Outdoor Photographer has a nice trail cam article in it, by the way. The photographer, Roy Toft, uses 35mm cameras to get high quality images. OP asks him how his Wild Ramona project got started, and he said, "We have a chunk of property behind our house, and it's pretty wild. Even though there are houses around the rim of it, there's cool stuff down there. I'd see occasional things, but I know there are many things I don't see. So, I started putting little trail cams, hundred-dollar trail cams, down there. You get your odd raccoon and opossum and bobcat and get excited, but it was just these crummy clips. I was doing it for video just to see what's there."
* * *
