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2010 WGI X6C 6MP 18
count red flash Camera Review
We are well into the middle of a lot of reviews and a good many are the
brothers and sisters of this camera. As far as stature I
do not know just how each would rate but if I were to
pick a top model from this company myself it would
probably be this camera. To call it the flag ship would
be over stating. It is more like a flag boat but a cute
little boat at that. The foot print is about five inches
tall and about three and a half inches wide and hangs
off the tree at about two and a half inches. A brown
fall realtree camouflage should be easy to hide on the
tree. From the time of the shows I have been waiting for
this cam to arrive so it could get in the lineup with
the mow many mini cameras we are receiving. With this
new year came a new supplier to this company and so far
we have found little fault, though we are not very far
into most of those reviews. Most of the people dealing
with this cam that we have communicated with have just
referred to it as the x6 so that is what we are going to
use through out the review. This is a cam in the door
but to balance things out they put the battery box in
the back so it still hangs strait when servicing the
camera. No strap slots on the back but it does have a
bungee slot at each corner and we see that this camera
did come with a set included for hanging the camera. A
single large latch closes the rubber gasket sealed door.
There is a solid full length hinge along the left side
that has no slop in operation and is solid during use.
The camera is built in a wedge shape where the back of
the camera is wider than the front. This seems to break
up the profile a little when it is on the tree. Starting
at the top is the 18 count array and inside that is the
light pipe and function indicator. Below that is the
lens and again I will mention that they use true optical
glass for this part. The PIR sensor is the wide angle
wrap around style and it is grey black multicolored
which makes for somewhat of a camo effect and breaks up
the grey a little. Down at the bottom is the external
battery port. Opened up you see the 8 AA cell holder and
the LCD/viewer (this is the g model) with the control
buttons for programming just below. On/off and delete
are to the right of the control buttons along with a
tiny reset button. The USB and SD card slot are at the
bottom next to the external battery port.
I have had the same problem with each and every one of the cameras so
far from this company because of not having a complete
specification chart. This camera is rated at six MP and
there are two outer resolutions below that and I am
going to guess and say that they are 1.3 for the low and
3.1 for the medium resolutions. With only 18 headlights
it is still rated to 40 feet which will get tested more
than once. The PIR is also rated at 40 feet so it should
match the flash range well. The onboard memory is 64 mb
which is standard for most cameras. I am using a 2 gig
card but it is rated to be able to go up t 8 gigs of SD
card memory if needed. There is a full color 2” display
screen for the programming and viewing the pictures in
the field. At the back of the camera is an 8 cell AA
holder but I stuck only 4 in the top slots and the cam
worked just fine. So in a pinch a person could get away
with using a set of 4 for a little while until he could
get his hands on a full batch. The internal settings are
saved during battery changes. The battery life is rated
to last about a month at default settings.
My
quick check of the day/night pictures was day pretty
good and good night IR pictures. Flash seemed to reach
out a lot further than I thought but our range will tell
the truth as to just where it is. Trigger times un
official seemed to be less than two seconds. There are
adjustable sensing levels available in the programming.
Rated better than some of the major suppliers this
camera has a delay that is down to 30 seconds which
beats the stuffing out of those one minute cameras. We
will enter this camera into the line of things to do
(something like 18 ahead of this one) and slip I on th
Trigger time table as soon as we can.
7-24-2010 update:
We
managed a day of same test testing meaning we just set
up for day range and then trigger times so we got part
way through our stack. This camera did pretty well on
the day range but was a bit hazy but there was a fair
degree of contrast. The 8 plate zoom was clear and
somewhat sharp. The trigger times were not as good as I
wanted. The daytime was over two and a half seconds and
the when taken with flash was just under two seconds.
Sensing seemed to be good but will test more when we do
the flash range because of the cooler night
temperatures. Flash range proved the light would reach
out to 50+ feet and the sensing was a short 35 feet for
this 88 degree evening. The flash range pictures were
surprisingly good and a zoom showed good detail.
08-05-2010 update:
This little camera has not disappointed us so far but it
did show a little more blur than we liked. The
transition periods are a little dark but so far most
everything has been pretty good. The activity in the
deployed area is slow right now but we did manage to get
a few good pictures.
08-14-2010 update:
The deer were kind to this camera and hung around so we
could get a ton more pictures and both day and night
were great but some blur. Battery
is down to one bar but we stuck it out in video to see
just how much longer we are going to get on the battery
life. This is a slick little camera that most folks
would enjoy using.
08-18-2010 update:
We have our first battery life and it looks like about a
little over three weeks and just under two hundred
pictures and twenty videos. The video quality suffered
as the batteries got very low.
08-30-2010 update: Well we managed to collect
some video samples and we are very satisfied with the
results. The night videos with IR are very sharp and
clear. There is a little IR burn on close targets but
overall this camera is functioning well above average.
Everything is top notch with the exception of the day
time trigger times which is over two seconds and
approaching three. This is a slick little camera and we
have been happy with it. No problems with the day video
either, they were very good.
09-11-2010 update: We cleared out a few things
and got the advanced system tuned up so we could
evaluate this camera deeper to fully understand why we
are experiencing the swing in day time trigger times.
First I will say that if I were to pick just one time to
hang on the day trigger evaluation it would be in the
area of 2.05 seconds. This camera is a little more
sophisticated than we initially thought. By shifting the
light metering we could extend the trigger time by
almost one full second. Of course this would represent
some extreme conditions. For what we feel is normal
conditions this camera will be just over the two second
time most of the time. Because we have developed this
new testing system over the past couple years we are now
finding more and more of the cameras have the more
advanced systems and it takes a little more than a
helicopter ride and a monitor to do the testing.
10-04-2010 update: A retesting of battery
life revealed just over 348 photos and 59 videos.
Reports from the users on the forums show this camera
can have much better battery life but it appears our
unit has sub par battery life. This review is now
closed.
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