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2012 Moultrie M-80XT 5 MP 30 count red flash digital camera review
I
have a source that that gets me cameras very early and I
had not intended to even open these Moultrie cameras up
until the turmoil of getting ready for the ATA show for
Scouting Assistant was over. Because of the forum hype
that was growing, I to managed to get my interest up so
I opened the box and dug out a couple to see what the
buzz was all about. I expected a very noticeable new
product to come out of the package but it is very much
the same product as the 2011 M-80 that we reviewed
during that year. Physically it appears to be identical
except for a light sensor change. This leaves maybe some
internal hardware or firm ware differences. Scanning
what was left of a product manual after it was machine
pressed into a plastic wrapper which resulted in a
booklet that was in a form that required that each page
be ironed out in order to begin to read.
Going through the booklet after I managed to straiten the pages enough
to read I found there are some really nice improvements
listed. These are
multishot-which has new options,
Delay-which
goes down to 5 seconds,
Motion freeze-which
changes the shutter speed down to 1/20th
second from 1/4th of a second, plus probably
some firmware handling of light to allow for the shorter
speed.
Now this is where this review stops and we are on hold. I could find no
warranty information or registration card in the
packaging. So Moultrie could be pulling a Cuddeback on
their customers. Last year we found that 6 month thing
published in the Cudde manual and that eventually was
changed to 18 months after we announced that point.
Until we see where we have a published in package
warranty, we would not recommend that anyone purchase
one of these cameras.
You can see that we are only showing a couple of views of the camera
because the appearance is the same as the 2011 M-80 so
if other views are important then refer to that review
for those pictures.
Going over a couple of things I found the last year’s booklet which I
printed out and is strait is very usable for this
camera. The delay period listed as 5 seconds seems to be
a little long but not much longer. The trigger time
during my initial tests appeared to be around 1.5 to 2
seconds. I am going to see just how well this motion
blur change to the night time IR pictures works in the
dark room in a few minutes. I am still having a problem
with the warranty issue and hope this is just an over
sight on their part. I completed the motion tests and
there may be a difference when the motion freeze is on
but so far it is hard to tell. We will have to do some
field tests on the flash range to maybe get some
distance testing on that feature to judge the
effectiveness. The sensing was not very strong during my
tests on the motion freeze because I was only using my
arm to trigger and the camera seemed to be having a hard
time seeing that motion. Seeing this problem I then took
a trip outside on this 35 degree morning and it was
catching me at 45 to 50 feet fairly easy.
12-31-2011 update: Some of the things that
were also carried over on these cameras is the Strap
only (no Python) loops on the back also the non standard
thread in the insert. This is not the standard ¼ inch
insert that is standard on all other cameras. Probably
this insert was designed for some type of proprietary
type of mount. Security is not one of the features built
into this camera. I also spent another two hours trying
to determine the freeze feature (not available on the
BLX) and I am not yet convinced that my old eyes can
tell much difference using the in house type tests.
01-01-2012 update: After a little help from
a fellow owner we found “Please register your camera on
line to activate your warranty. Well we went on line and
searched the entire site and at the far bottom under
“returns” a mention of warranty. As we did with Cudde we
find this is not acceptable. There should be warranty
data in the package. Then that explanation as to where
to locate that information should you choose to either
use the phone, card (if provided), or on line to
register. There is a trend to move toward on line
services which makes sense but there are still a vast
amount of users who still rather use the registration
card (US mail) and at least have the privilege to be
able to read the warranty information in the store prior
to purchasing a product. This may seem petty but an on
line printed warranty may or may not be considered valid
should a major issue arise. We would very much like to
see the in package system returned to and kept.
01-01-2012 update 2: Trying to explain the
multi shot feature I will have to take it in two phases.
First they have their standard burst method which is to
select the amount of burst and the camera will take that
amount of pictures with about 2 seconds between the
shots. Then the burst “fast shot” is the burst mode
where the selected amount of pictures is all
taken within about 2 seconds for the entire burst. The
programming user can program the picture amount and
speed he/she selects depending on the need of that user.
I am not going to go through all the physical dimensions
and description because that was all covered in the
original M-80 review and that data remains the same. The
packaging did not have any mention like “rapid fire
trigger” as we have seen on other packaging but it does
indicate the battery life could be up to one year. There
is sound with the video and this camera has the “Plot”
mode plus the Plot day and motion night feature. This is
limited to just 3600 day time pictures per day (15
second interval) in the time lapse mode. One funny note
is they recommend Duracell or Energizer AA cells. My
choice would be Ray O Vac first Energizer second and
last Duracell as long as you pre test each Duracell
battery out of the package to insure that it is good
prior to putting it in the camera. I know we did like
the M series last year so maybe they have done one
better this year with a couple upgrades.
Motion Freeze feature is where they have changed the
shutter speed to eliminate the blur factor that has been
one of the down sides of IR night time pictures. On
paper it does look impressive and maybe a giant step in
the right direction. Until we have some extensive field
testing, we will not judge its effectiveness. I do know
that close range 10 to 15 feet dark room tests did not
reflect a noticeable change.
01-02-2012 update: The day and night/8
plate range pictures were taken and as expected the
flash did not disappoint and is the same as last year.
We then moved on and did some walk tests with and
without the freeze feature turned on. There is evidence
that it does work but not to the extent we would wish
but it is definitely better. Please view the pictures
below to see the difference. Another note is that we
performed the sensing tests and this was at an ideal
temperature for good long range sensing and both the XT
and the BLX would only sense out to 38 feet.
Inside lab tests began to go south for this camera. It
has officially made the “feeder list” with its trigger
times. The without flash comes in at around 2 seconds
and with flash is on out to 2.43 seconds. They did hit
the delay period right on the money and the 5 second
settings coming in right on the money. The 15 second
setting also was accurate so that part problem was not
carried over from last year. We are puzzled at the
sensing and was wondering if they purposely did that so
that all pictures would be well inside the flash range.
01-03-2012 update: We managed to capture a few
pictures from our resident herd and these were with the
freeze factor turned off and of course we
experienced the blur with the night IR pictures. For the
top resolution setting both the day and night pictures
have that fuzzy look to them and not nearly as sharp I
don’t think as we got with the M-80 original we tested
last year. The color match is also weak which was also
better last year. So far we are not impressed with the
picture quality we have seen and I would suggest you
tour the pictures in the high setting from the review
last year and you will see what we are indicating. We
have now turned on the freeze feature to test
that feature on animals in a natural state to evaluate
some more as to its effectiveness. The strong points so
far are a good flash and delay, the rest is a step
backward.
01-05-2012 update: We are continuing the
freeze function test which requires a large number of
night pictures in order to be able to select those which
would have enough movement to show blur. We also have a
forum member who has the same camera and he recently
posted some day picture which very much reflect the same
fuzzy characteristics and color weakness as our sample
pictures show. This is very strange because last years
camera had sharp clear pictures with good color match.
01-06-2012 update: The sample pictures of
the “freeze” option turned on reflects that it does
work. As to the degree of improvement accomplished by
this option will to have to be the new users call. We
found that small areas such as horns still have a weak
appearance if the animal is near the fringe (38 feet) of
the sensing area. Please view the sample pictures for
your call on this function. I have had a couple of long
conversations with a couple of camera addicts that I
know and I was pointing out the differences of this
years M-80 compared to last years camera and both looked
at what they were now selling for with a sub $100 price
and function after being updated they choose the last
years camera hands down over the new ones with the new
options.
01-08-2012 update: Having switched over to
video mode we found that the fuzziness followed over
into this feature. The sound was clear with no internal
background noise. The video is limited to ten seconds
for night time in order to limit battery drainage. The
IR illumination was very good in most cases though we
did have a little IR burn on close targets.
The transition periods
had no whiteouts but did produce some very dark pictures
prior to switching to some very washed out monochrome
pictures.
The multi shot feature comes in two styles, first on the
program is standard and second is the fast
fire. The standard happens about every 4 seconds and
the fast fire happens about 200ms apart. This can be
selected up to 4 shots. After the multi shot sequence
the camera will enter a delay period of about 18 seconds
for the standard setting and the delay between the fast
fire sequences is also 18 seconds for a programmed delay
setting of 5 seconds. The rapid fire does work very
well.. Please view the pictures below for the readout of
these sequences.
01-15-2012 update: We wanted to show the
picture difference for each resolution setting on the
camera. With the camera locked down we captured pictures
in each resolution one after the other and under
basically the same conditions so that you can see what
the difference is per setting. Please view those samples
below.
01-21-2012 update: Well we are back in the
saddle and we went ahead and done some very extensive
trigger testing in the multi-shot fast mode and
we are sorry to report that our initial tests were a
fluke and the standard trigger times of 1.98s day and
2.43s night apply. Some times on the first trigger test
out the gate changes so that is why we have to do
multiple repeats of the same test to ensure that the
data is correct. During those first tests we did only
that single test and because of the rush to get things
ready for ATA we went ahead and posted those results.
The true and end result is the fast feature only effects
the time between the multi shots and not the trigger
time at all. This concludes the testing on this
unit. We will report a final battery life when
that is completed. This review is closed.
05-19-2012 final update: We stretched the
battery life out to this week and the camera took 4152
pictures and 75 videos. Total time was 130 days. This
review is closed.
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