[reaperman]

Update: Another 782 pictures brings the running total to 21,694 photos. The battery meter is now displaying 24%. Again, there were no night pictures.

[rebbie]

Update: Another 782 pictures brings the running total to 21,694 photos. The battery meter is now displaying 24%. Again, there were no night pictures.

Thanks for the update. The camera has been amazing for me! Just curious what kind of batteries are are running in it? Thanks again for the updates!

[reaperman]

Update: Another 782 pictures brings the running total to 21,694 photos. The battery meter is now displaying 24%. Again, there were no night pictures.

Thanks for the update. The camera has been amazing for me! Just curious what kind of batteries are are running in it? Thanks again for the updates!

The batteries are Amazon brand alkaline, no lithium for me. I've had good luck with Amazon batteries in all of my cameras. Their about $20 for a 100 pack, but I was lucky enough to grab the last 100 for about $12 on sale.

[Mjn1978]

I've been following this thread since you started it. Was curious why you haven't changed batteries yet? It does seem to give great battery life for day pics but if it's given up at night time then technically the camera is failing. I own a covert red 40 2012 model that went nearly 3 years on a set of lithium and when the batteries finally failed the night pics went from clear and bright to very dim on the last couple hundred pics and then went completely flat and died. I still have the covert and it is still cranking pics out for me after almost 6 years.

[reaperman]

I've been following this thread since you started it. Was curious why you haven't changed batteries yet? It does seem to give great battery life for day pics but if it's given up at night time then technically the camera is failing. I own a covert red 40 2012 model that went nearly 3 years on a set of lithium and when the batteries finally failed the night pics went from clear and bright to very dim on the last couple hundred pics and then went completely flat and died. I still have the covert and it is still cranking pics out for me after almost 6 years.

The main reason I haven't changed batteries is because this time of year I'm not overly interested in scouting. If it were closer to bow season (1.5 months away) I would be more interested to see what is coming thru at all times of day/night. Plus I'm curious to see at what voltage level the camera will not take photos. Now I know around +-30% on the battery meter the flash stops working. As long as this spot is good for up to 1000 photos a week, I'm pretty confident I will be changing batteries soon.

[reaperman]

Update: Another 764 photos brings the running total to 22,458. The battery meter is displaying 23%
However, I estimate the flash stopped working around the 19,000 picture count.

[reaperman]

Update: Another 1,142 photos (all daytime) brings the running total to 23,600 total pictures. Battery meter is displaying 18%.

Disclaimer: I estimate the flash stopped working around the 19,000 picture count.

[csb]

Your paying $.12 a battery so it costs you $.72 to get back to 100% on the battery life. You lost your capability of taking night time pictures over 4,600 pics ago. I would think with the battery life that low your detection and trigger speed is also off. Just what is it your trying to accomplish here?

[reaperman]

Your paying $.12 a battery so it costs you $.72 to get back to 100% on the battery life. You lost your capability of taking night time pictures over 4,600 pics ago. I would think with the battery life that low your detection and trigger speed is also off. Just what is it your trying to accomplish here?

Surprisingly, detection speed hasn't suffered at all. I wish I hadn't deleted all my photos earlier because the camera can still catch a bird in flight. To answer the question of what I'm trying to accomplish is simple. To see how many pictures the camera will take until it finally quits. I have been as honest as possible throughout the past year since I started this thread. I was upfront when I noticed the flash quit working. None of my other cameras will take photos after the flash quits as far as I know. I can always tell when the batteries were low because the flash would get dimmer and dimmer. Not with this camera, the flash was bright until the end. I know this because I was watching for signs of a weakened flash way before it stopped working.

The fact that the camera is able to take +- 5,000 photos after the flash is beneficial. Especially for those who have their cameras out for extended periods of time any many miles away.

[reaperman]

Update: Exactly 1000 more photos were taken this past week bringing the running total to 24,600. The battery meter is now displaying 17%. As of now the camera took approx. 5,600 since the batteries can no longer power the flash.

[reaperman]

Update: Another 804 (daytime) photos brings the running total to 25,404 pictures. Battery meter is now showing 14%.

[reaperman]

Update: Another 1040 photos this week bring the running total to 26,444 total pictures. The battery meter now displays 8%.
Again, the low battery level stopped the flash around 19K photos. Someone a while ago replied saying the camera has already stopped functioning when the flash quit and the detection trigger must also be lacking. Each week I seem to get a few photos of flying birds, so I don't thing the trigger speed has suffered. Below is a photo from the past week.

bird.JPG (1.76 MiB) Viewed 1646 times

[reaperman]

Over the weekend I checked the camera two different times. As of Saturday, the camera took another 720 photos with the battery meter displaying 4%. But when checking the camera, the cameras information screen wouldn't stay illuminated after a few seconds. I thought for sure the camera had finally died. After trying to arm the camera with another sd card the screen again shut off. I turned the camera off and on to arm it and noticed it took 2 photos. So I decided to leave it overnight and check it today. To my surprise it had taken another 266 photos throughout the day and morning. The information screen on the camera wouldn't stay on any longer and the battery meter now showed 3%. It was time to call it quits on that set of batteries. So the grand total of photos taken on Amazon alkaline batteries was 27,430. I first installed the batteries on July 12,2017 but pulled the camera sometime in December due to inactivity and a upcoming Minnesota winter. The camera lost its flash function around the 19k photos. The ending battery voltage across all 6 batteries was 1.19 volts.

Overall, I have to give credit to the accuracy of the battery meter. Especially since its displayed in % not just a series of three or four bars. The trigger speed didn't seem to be effected by the low battery voltage. Over the past week the camera caught two different birds mid-flight.

The photo quality of the camera is fair, the pictures are a bit light in color. Motion blur on my camera is evident, even during the daytime but not all of the time. For some reason antlers on a buck walking are hard to distinguish.
The photo posted below is of a buck this morning and one of the last photos taken by the camera showing motion blur in the antler area.

IMG_0077.JPG (1.77 MiB) Viewed 1596 times