|
2010
Primos TruthCam 35 3MP 35 count Red Flash Camera Review
We've had these cameras for a long time during the prerelease
period and we ran all of them through their paces and
noted all deficiencies. These notes were taken back to
the factory and corrections made. This is a thirty five
count red flash three mega pixel camera that lists for
under a hundred dollars. It will do video and record
pictures. It has delay settings of 10 seconds, 1 minute,
and 30 minutes. Stack those specs up against that Cudde
IR and see which one shines the best.
This cam is the low end of a set of four different models. I really like
cameras that are anywhere between 1.3 and 3.1 MP. They
don’t fill up the old hard drive and I can E mail a
bunch of them at a time. It comes in a satin black non
reflective case and is only 9 inches tall. This not
exactly a mini cam with its 7 inch width but will still
hide very well on the tree just fine. This is described
as being a three MP camera but it switches to 1.3 for
the night IR shots like the Predator cams. The array is
under a little roof at the top front with the status
lamps and PIR just below. A small LCD window is in the
door just below the motion sensor. SD card and external
battery ports are at the bottom of the cam. Strap slots
and tree grabbers are on the back and mounting inserts
for the optional angle bracket.
Undo the latch and open the door you will see the battery tubes left
and right for the four D cells and centered is a small
LCD and a set of switches to enter date and to turn the
camera on and off. Above that is five slide switches to
control function. The first is the off/photo/video
switch that is labeled status. The next is to select the
video length of 10/30/60 seconds. The delay switch is
next with three settings of 10 seconds, 1 minute, and 30
minutes. The Multi shot (burst) switch with settings
available at 1, 3, and 5 pictures per trigger. Last is
the sensitivity of the PIR that can be adjusted from
high through normal to low.
A quick look at the pictures showed they were very good day and fair
night quality. I will hold a little on the night
pictures until we go to the hill for sample pictures but
the color day pictures were very good for this priced
camera. Slipping back to the shop and the trigger time
table and found that most of my tests were less than 1.5
seconds unofficial. This is a little butt kicker if the
rest of the evaluations don’t fall apart.
No
internal memory or TV out/USB ports so all images will
have to be taken care of by removing the card and taking
it to an external device to read. Most people do this
anyway. The documentation was lacking the specification
chart and other than that worked ok for the data I
needed. If this is their bottom of the line then the
“Truth X” will give the higher valued manufacturers a fit
when that gets reviewed shortly.
06-12-2010 update: After a very long haired
meeting about our procedures we have decided to maybe
show a little more of our testing procedures. Some of
which we still need to protect but will show that the
trigger times are very solid. This camera for both with
and without flash turned in a very respectable 1.29
second trigger time. We will for the first time show one
of our monitors with the readout. We have some folks
that want to copy or one up on our procedures so we will
keep the main portion of these tests still behind wraps.
This little cam is going to be hard to beat for the
price.
06-13-2010 update: This is a hundred dollar
Wildview style camera that achieves its programming
through a series of switches. The frills like internal
memory and TV out are not built into this camera so
something to read your cards is needed. With that said,
this rascal pumps out pictures and video’s pretty darn
good. Sensing range at 85 degrees was fifty feet. Flash
range is just past 40 feet and the IR picture quality
was a little fuzzy or maybe hazy. A quick test with
editing software would remove this condition and clear
up the pictures. Both this camera and its big brother
the TruthCam 60 have a narrow sensing area which is a
little bothering but the trigger times seem to keep most
captures close to the center of the picture. I would
like to see this moved out closer to the FOV of the
camera lens.
06-21-2010 update: We got whacked in the
back of the head with a sack full of whiteout pictures.
This camera does not like the transition period
(day/night) when placed under heavy canopy. We got many
pictures that ranged from total white out to just the
black and white clear pictures. It has a hard time
telling its self whether or not it is day or night. This
means that this camera probably will do best in more
open areas where the light is brighter. The color
pictures were clear and have good color and the full IR
pictures maintained that bit of fuzziness but very
readable. The picture count was way up there so the
sensing having a narrow look still managed to get a ton
of pictures. The edge of a field or an opening in the
deep woods would be a prime place for any camera that
has a hard time getting enough light into the light
sensor.
07-11-2010 update:
This cam has ran from June 4 and was found dead in
its tracks on our property down south. The batteries ran
out after 262 videos and 360 pictures. We had moved it
to an area where it did not have to deal with heavy over
head canopy and we did not see any white out problems.
We did see where one big doe spooked and was caught on
video bolting. The cause of this may have been the
flickering array because of being in the video mode.
There may have been a clunk to draw attention to the
array but we cannot prove this. It has done well for us
in this location.
08-01-2010 update:
Another three weeks and we gathered a bunch of pretty
good pictures. Still hanging in there with no white outs
in this location. There is a real difference when you
understand what the cameras likes and do your setup to
match its strong points to the area and it seems to just
want to give you as much as it can.
08-14-2010 update:
Of the three big cameras from Primos I grew found of
this camera because of its simple methods of everything.
It has done a real good job for us and will probably be
one of our long range test cameras we will use once we
get the load down to a slower grind. It has been a good
solid little camera and has its preference to areas
where there is a little more son and it will perform
well. We are closing this review for now.
|
Trigger Times
without flash
 |
Trigger Times
with Flash
|
|
Flash Range
Tests
|
|
|
|
Video Samples
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
