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2011 Hunten Outdoors GCS20-70IR 56 count red
flash 7 MP digital camera review
This is the first in a series
of the Hunten Outdoor camera $180 offering for
2011. We had been involved in the testing of the
little small GS-35 cameras earlier in the year.
I picked to start with this camera because of
its different case design. This is where the
case is mounted to the tree but there is a drop
down drawer that has the battery compartment (4
C’s) and the programming screen and control
buttons. The SD card and USB ports are also in
this same area. The SD card slot (label in 32
gig) is hidden above the programming screen. To
access this dropdown door you have to pull
forward a plastic tab sticking out the bottom of
the camera. This forward action will un latch
the drawer and it will drop down exposing the
screen/battery area.
Out of the box this is a very
impressive looking camera. It has to be the very
best color combination (moss like) of any I have
seen on a camera. It hides very well with most
all foliage. There is some assembly needed to
install the bark biter/belt loop assembly to the
back of the camera. This was easy and all that
was needed was a Phillips driver to install 4
screws. This is a fixed 7 MP still camera that
has a 4 burst and a single video 20 second
640X480 resolution. The trigger is advertized at
1 second. I took some sample tests in side the
lab and the sensing was very good and looked
very much like trigger time was very near 1
second. The outside pictures were a bit fuzzy
but the color representation was very good.
That latch thing sticking out the bottom sure made handling it for tests
very difficult. There is no gasket on the drawer
but it does fit up inside so it would be
difficult to get wet when properly hung on the
tree. Where things fall apart is the ants can
walk in and set up camp. There is an area around
the latch where the gap is over 1/16 inch which
is an invitation to a fire ant to walk in and
build a nest. I took a pipe cleaner and laid it
across that area and closed the drawer and that
seemed to fill the gap just fine.
Documentation and programming seemed to be a good match. Being that this
is a single resolution camera the programming
was easy. This is very much like the same system
as the WGI cameras have.
Security is not part of the design though there is a cable slot on the
back; it is mostly plastic and would probably
break fairly easy. A double wrap with a
crossover knot might work if you cross over the
front of the camera and then cross the cable
near the feed through loop.
My short time with this camera so far has made a believer out of me on
this camouflage job they have selected. It is
really at home on one of my oak trees and even
with the array having a odd shape it hides very
well. I will say “very good job Hunten for this
color selection”.
Better get this off to the other half for some serious and final formal
testing.
While I was waiting for that
I noticed a statement in the user manual. “This
camera has a patent pending intelligent PIR
sensor that detects animal movement all times of
the year without false triggers.” I had noticed
how well it was sensing and I mentioned that
above. I had just ran similar tests on the WGI
N6 and found I had to work to get a trigger. I
went ahead and set up several other cameras (one
being a
Moultrie
80) along with this one and did a little walk
test and sure enough this camera out sensed all
of them. I have yet to see how wide the sensing
zone is but I hope that is not like that cudde/leupold
mayhem and having a two foot wide sensing area.
I will be testing that very shortly. The sensing
zone appears to be as wide 12 feet at a distance
of 15 feet, as near as I can tell without
setting up a formal test. This tells me that my
concern about the pencil type zone is not the
case.
09-11-2011 update:
This camera had a bit slower trigger time than
its two little brothers and came in around 2
seconds. The day range was fuzzy and the night
range with flash reached out past 50 feet.
09-18-2011 update:
This camera seems to be producing some pretty
good pictures both day and night. The sensing is
way out there but we are not having some weather
in the 50’s and 60’s. We did not get any white
out pictures but there were a few that were dark
at transition time. So far this camera has
performed well. We are not setup in the video
mode and will report on that soon. Please view
the sample pictures below.
10-01-2011 update:
Please view the sample video’s we managed to
capture. This process went through without any
issues and the results were very favorable. More
people are starting to see and use the video
mode more and more so the camera companies have
managed to get a pretty good handle on this
process.
11-19-2011 update:
Battery
life lasted 67 days and this camera took 1666
pictures and 127 videos. Overall performance has
been very good.
Trigger Tests
( without flash 1.84s)
( with flash 2.04s)
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