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2012 Primos Turkey Tracker time lapse camera
review
When I first seen this come out and read the specifications and the
“wide angle” approach to a time lapse only
camera was very interesting. Being the main
target animal is a small bird compared to a deer
sized animal you would need to be much closer
for the time lapse pictures to be of value.
Being up close would normally cause the field of
view to be much smaller.
Adapting a wide angle approach with the camera could allow the close in
function and still cover the entire food plot or
field. This unit does not have the mid day skip
feature and is all day only capture device.
Same frame as their previous released DPS that many found very useful,
this camera looks the same except it has a
lighter colored camo finish. Single lens with
external battery port on the bottom and strap
loops on the back is about all the description
of the exterior needed. Inside is the small
programming LCD and the control buttons with the
8 AA cell battery holder just below. There is
some instruction stickers on the inside back.
The door has a full gasket and locks up tight.
Programming and date setting is easy and fairly simple. To arm just
watch for the “on” indication of the LCD and
wait a bit and it will start taking pictures at
the selected frequency. I viewed a few samples
and they were very good for the 1.3 MP size.
I have been using my DPS almost continuously since I got it for some
security type of applications. I needed a
day/night time lapse for a job so I pulled the
DPS in and deployed one of my Plot watchers for
that task. Being both the DPS and Turkey Tracker
were both on my bench I decided to just evaluate
just how much wider the field of view the TT was
over the DPS. I devised a lock down mount so I
could situate both cameras in exactly the same
position and hit
go.
Both cameras had its turn in the mount and the
cards were pulled and compared. Whoa, something
is wrong because both the DPS and the Turkey
Tracker have the same field of view. I wonder
why they classed this wide angle and not the DPS?
Neither one appears to be that because one of
the regular trail cameras that I just removed
from that same bracket has maybe a wider FOV
than the TT camera. I guess my dream of the wide
angle TL camera just got stuffed.
No trigger of flash tests with this unit and only normal field
deployment.
06-03-2012 update:
We loaded up the two cameras and have had them
out for over a week with high capacity cards.
The plan was to run a comparison video of each
camera to show the captures exactly side by side
with the same aim. That test turned to ____t and
the cards were corrupt. We should have double
checked for compatibility prior to leaving out
that long and made sure that our class 4 Toshiba
16 gig cards would work. We are going to run a
pre test with 2 gig cards and put it back out in
the same configuration once we determine that
the cameras will work with the installed cards.
This is not fun.
06-05-2012 update:
After a long back paddle through our container
of SD cards we came up with some high capacity
class 2 cards that found their liking to this
camera. Back up on the hill it was just a short
time we had several thousand captures per
camera. We were not disappointed with the
results. (please view the samples) We have
determined that the Turkey Tracker and the DPS
are basically the same camera with the exception
of being able to move past mid day in the
programming on the DPS. If that is important to
you then choose the DPS if not choose the Turkey
Tracker. One thing that I did notice was in the
catalogs and on the vendor sites the DPS sells
for a little as $60 and the TT sells for $99.
This alone might make that mid day skip worth
while. Either one, they seem to do a real good
job with the daylight only time laps tasks. Be
sure that you do some testing prior to venturing
out on a long trip to the field. Don’t get
caught like we did and a week later find that
you had incompatible cards in the slot. Long
term short delay deployments require large
capacity cards and a source of extra power like
the accessory battery pack offered by Primos. We
found that on an average we would get a couple
weeks battery life (standard alkaline) on the 10
second delay setting. This review is closed.
The following range photos
compare the Turkey tracker and the last year's
DPS cameras. Mounted in the exact same
spot allows us to consider the "wide angle"
of the Turkey Tracker:
Turkey Tracker:
DPS:
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