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2011 WGI Z4 (Flash 4) White flash strobe 4 MP
fixed digital camera review
Yet another white flash camera and this time it is a 4 MP built on the
same frame as the other three in this sequence.
With the amount of WGI cameras I have had hold
of in a row I think this camera for some reason
is a little weak on sensing but the initial test
pictures came out good but there appeared to be
a bit of a blue cast to the flash pictures. All
of these cameras are in the same style of a case
and this one is the white flash with the large
strobe top front. We are very glad to see more
of these hitting the market because the demand
has seemed to be on the way back. This little 5
inch square box has just the PIR sensor and LCD
on the front under the flash. Two little
indicators for the PIR are also located left and
right of this sensor lens. All the battery
compartment and port data is the same as the
rest so I am not going to go into detail about
that.
I mentioned a little about some in house testing and found some
interesting things out. The trigger seems to be
somewhere less than two seconds and the flash
will just about wipe out your optic nerve if you
are looking a little too close. Still not sure
about the sensing on this particular unit
because I had to work a little harder to get
captures than I did with the other previous
three. This could be related to maybe a little
increase in the afternoon temperature I hope so.
This is a fixed 4 MP only plus this camera also
has a day time video mode in the 640X480
resolution. The sensor is rated out to 40 feet
and the SD card can go up to 16 gig.
Instructions also say about a month of battery
life. This all works off just 4 C cells and we
chose the Ray O Vac brand for this test.
I really want to see the pictures from this camera on some real deer and
try to evaluate that blue cast I observed in the
dark room. After all those tests with the red
flash IR cameras, it is fun to play with the
white flash for a change. The play time here is
slow due to that dreaded 30 second minimum
delay. After working with a camera or two that
has a quick delay time and then try to work with
a much longer delay just makes things go so
slow. The other delay options are 1, 2, and 5
minutes. I would like to see a 15 second delay
or below minimum on all cameras. Anyway I can
deal with the 30 second delay once in a while as
long as when it says 30 seconds and it tests out
to be that amount of time or below. I do not
like to find things like we did with the M
series Moultrie cams where the switch said 15
seconds and the actual time was over 30 seconds
at that setting.
If the trigger comes out officially below 2
seconds and the sensing works as it should I
could find a bit of favor with this camera. Once
we get on down the list we will find out about
all these questions.
Ok, this applies to all the
WGI cameras. This is the two small indicators
that they use to show PIR function and also the
write to card after capture. Both are very
useful but can also give away the cameras
location. I tried some of the self adhesive dots
from the office supply store and they work well
and can be bought in different colors. They do
leave residue when removed, unless you find the
removable variety. Of all the things I have
tried I found that a small cheap role of black
electrical tape (not the shiny type) with the
dull finish works best. It can be lifted and
moved to the side during setup and once all this
is done they can be replaced back over the
indicators and because the tape is opaque no
light shines thru.
08-08-2011 update:
Next in line in the lab showed that the trigger
times were 1.21 for day and 1.56 for flash. The
delay set on 30 seconds were stretched out to 35
seconds a 5 second slip. The sensing was at 50
feet for this 85 degree evening. Picture quality
slipped down a notch from the last 6 MP cameras
built on this same platform. Both day and night
color was a bit less in camera than the 6 MP
versions. It is good but not near as good as the
6 MP brother units.
08-09-2011 update:
We did not get many pictures so we cannot judge
the transition time but those both color day and
color night pictures came out fine. View the few
samples we collected.
08-10-2011 update: I just viewed a
short sample of the video from this camera. This
is day only so this video information will be
rather short. The quality is pretty good and
smooth. The color match is very good on the
close up animals. Not too bad for a little
camera that is considered cheap.
09-21-2011 update:
This is a very decent little flash camera. Many
find great favor with a small camera that will
take night color pictures. As with the 6 MP
version of this same camera it has the potential
of taking a lot of sales away from the Capture
camera which has more problems than most can
imagine. We are going to close this review now
and just report on the battery life as that data
becomes available.
10-16-2011 update:
Battery
life on this camera was Videos 20, Pictures
1465, 65 days run time.
Trigger Tests
( without flash )
( with flash )
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