Predator Xtinction                flash digital camera review 09-00-2008

We have anticipated the release of this camera from late last year when the noise was leaking out that there was something really great coming from Predator cams. Hour after hour of research since the anticipated May 08 release has kept the rumor force buzzing. The web site finally started to show the pictures and features of what we could expect. At the top it says The Evolution Has Begun then just below that is the word Xtinction. I know it is missing the e but are they trying to say that next year folks are going to find these hanging on a tree and say yea that is one of those old Predator cams, they are now extinct? This review will try to see if all the new improvements for 08 would save it from that becoming more than just a name, let’s hope not. We did not leave on good terms last year with this company. We normally do not have these problems but our findings were honest and true and that data did not set well with the folks over there. They have since made it known that we would not get a thing from them again. Well we are wishing them well with this year’s addition to the market. The delay in the release seemed to be something about a parts issue and had some dealers canceling orders because of no explanation and non communications. We have several people that we have direct contact with and are in possession of the early released cams and we have already filled up a file on field data coming from them as we do with all new releases. When a cam is due to be released at the end of April and we are now into September and only a select few have been released so we started to pay close attention as to reason. We have our own on the way in, plus daily feed of field use data. I will hold on to that for a while until I get into this a little deeper. The Brochures states do traditional IR trail cams with the “red glowing Bulbs” spook deer? if you don’t want to take a chance the Predator Xtinction should be your first choice! Whether using it over scrapes, baits, or trails this is a must have for all serious hunters. We are in complete agreement on the “true“ infrared emitters having no red glow and do not spook deer. This cam advertised that they also have an additional selectable 16 standard emitters over the 32 true IR emitters. The extra red glow emitters are to be used only when the need for a longer range flash is needed. We have a couple of the competitor’s cams that are black flash and they have performed well above our expectations. We are truly looking forward to putting this camera through the same paces we put the others through.

Let’s take a look at the case and its features. It appears that it is the same case that was used last year and is in a nice gray moth pattern. They do have a very solid case and is probably one of the best features of this camera. The hitch pin bracket is still somewhat cumbersome to me but some folks really like it. We know that our needs and methods of use differ in the way other folks deploy their cams so it is a good feature for some and can be removed for others. Our early field gathered data will lead us in an unusual direction at first and once that has been looked at then we will proceed with our normal review. We have always wondered just why some camera companies say “pass word protected or 4 digit security code” to prevent theft. If I am the typical bad guy that is trespassing and find that camera hanging on a tree and not cabled down, it will be gone. The fact that it is electronically protected does not change the fact that it is gone. Maybe to the satisfaction of the fellow that lost the cam that it cannot be used by the bad guy will be of some comfort. But when the bad guy finds that it is not usable then he will probably throw it away or destroy it. Now lets back up and go the same scenario and the bad guy finds this same un cabled cam but it has a small label across the front that says password protected then that might make a difference. There is absolutely no substitute for good physical security and then the electronic thing would also help. This camera has this label molded into the camo case and it is hard to see but is there. This cam has electronic protection if you choose to use it but is a little weak on the physical means.

Five pictures in fewer than five seconds in burst with a minimum delay of 30 seconds for both the single trigger and burst 5 mode Max delay is one hour. I always wondered about that big old doe that smelled just right and came walking out and lingered around for about 6 seconds and then wandered off and then that big old buck with his nose in the wind came in looking for her and stayed around for about 5 more seconds, do you think this cam would catch a picture of him? Video is five to fifteen seconds controlled by the user’s selection. As with last years cam, this year they still have the view/touch screen for programming and viewing pictures in the field. Last year this screen worked well for us but when we did the freezer test it became hard to use. Those folks in the Dakotas might have to do a little warm up operation to get the thing to work. This cam takes 10 AA batteries or can be used with a SLA external for longer battery life. Solar panels are also available to also keep things running longer than what the AA’s will do. One of the features that we are seeing this year is the date time stamp on the videos. This camera has adapted this feature also which is a nice touch. We have had reports of some cams that are starting to have an issue with whiteout and these issues have been called in and the Predator folks quickly asked for the cam back to replace a bad plastic lens over the sensor. Plastic, I thought they only used glass, well maybe not over the sensor but a replacement lens was ordered and things will probably up and running soon on those cams.

The advertised trigger time is ½ second “hypersonic trigger time” so of course I was trying to figure out how this term fit trigger time. It seems that that term relates to speeds 5 times faster than sound and mostly deals with aircraft. Thinking back about last year we had the lux thing floating around to describe the lack of resolution. We had a saying in the military that said “If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance then baffle them with BS” I think the brilliance of hypersonic has wilted down to the other term again. Having a half second trigger time is a very respectful place to be in the trail cam industry. There are many that far exceed that time but we absolutely see no problem with any cam that is sub 2 seconds with out the aircraft speed as an identifier. As you can see that the type of flash has been omitted at the start of this review because we cannot call it a black flash and we cannot call it a red flash but it is closely mated to the low glow red flash but far weaker so that hole will probably be filled with the term slack flash. There is also a big gap in the advertising of this cam that deals in two main areas. “True IR and Double Vision Technology” plainly written in the catalogs. From what we can see, both of these things are not on the camera that we are reviewing and it is most definitely a new Predator Xtinction. Again this is not brilliance.

I looked for the 32 “true infrared” emitters and the additional 16 clear emitters for extended flash range and could not find them. In there place we see an array of lo glow emitters that appear to be coated with a blue coating. This again is not brilliance. From what we have seen from many users this cam does perform very well but does put off a red glow that is subdued. This makes what we would think a very usable camera that has some very good features but it definitely is not what a person thinks he is getting when he reads the catalog description. As we had to do last year we have had to spend a lot of time explaining what we feel is actually there and not what has been written it the advertising. Let’s see if we can get on with an actual review of the new 08 Predator Xtinction slack flash camera. Right in the middle of the web sites features page is the “made in America” symbol and flag. It appears this might be a bit of a stretch, it should be more like Nissan and Toyota they use the term “assembled in America”.

Picture of the array from the catalog:
 
The array from our unit:

Out of the box first impression is that this is a super good looking camera, The gray camo is very well done and the case is very solid. With my catalog in my lap and this cam next to the picture it is very obvious that what came out of the box and what is displayed in the catalogs pictures and description is definitely not the same. Rather than spend any more time on the degree of discrepancies in the advertising and what I have in my hand I am forced to just report on what came out of the box because that is what everyone will receive even if it isn’t what they ordered. This is one of two cams we have for this review just to make sure everything is parallel.

The big question that will answer about a hundred e-mails we have received. YES this camera does have a red glow, it is subdued but can easily be seen at 15 feet. Is this a problem? I would think not unless the cam is at eye level and in multi shot or movie mode. This will put this cam in another category and remove it from its advertised black flash category and enter it into its own slack low glow flash category.

Below are some thumbnails (click for larger versions) demonstrating the actual glow taken with a hand held camera in a dark room.  these photos are not enhanced.  The camera has acurately captured what we see with our eyes:

The array on at 5 Feet


The array on at 10 Feet


The array on at 15 Feet

The programming was a snap and I had to adjust the day/night parameters to get the red glow pictures with my G-9 to show the glow distance. The day/night programming would only have a problem if we had an extremely gray day and the light levels would extend into the day. This setting should be good for about thirty days in most cases. We did experience some difficulties with a couple of Bushnell cameras that had the same feature. The rest of the programming is very straight forward and easy. To get things going after the programming is done just hit the run button and close the box. The only other ports are for the CF card slot and a USB port for the jump drive and hookup to your PC. If we can get some good flash distance and sensing range along with quality pictures this camera will be hard to beat in this price range. I will get some sensing distances and flash range tests in high only in the morning.

10-02-2008 update:  I spent a good part of the morning sending a friend a note in reference to this review, in an attempt to bring things up to date. This morning was a very good morning for testing because the temperature was in the 50’s and things just seemed to fall in place. Being able to see the flash go off was a definite aid to my flash range testing. This camera has made a definite improvement over what we saw last year. The flash reached past 40 feet and the sensing range was just less than 40 feet for this 51 degree morning. The day night time expired and the filter flipped during my sensing range tests. There was a definite clunk that made me look to see if the cam had fallen off the tree. I know this only happens twice a day but if the very animal you were trying to capture was present and this happened it might cause the animal to spook. I took the cam and put it in my lap and reprogrammed this time and when I crossed current time the filter would shift making this noise. Those who presently have this cam can try this and you will see what I am talking about. This is minor and not like the clunk every shot that we seen with the Stealth cam IR. There appears to be a difference in what the book said was minimum delay of 30 seconds. I tested this and found it ranged from 16 to 18 seconds. This makes this camera much more appealing for trail users. These folks have made a giant step up in performance in this year’s model. If we can just get good 50 foot flash range and decent pictures we will be able to call this cam a winner. I will try to use a comparison between the RM-45 Reconyx and this cameras night pictures. I know that the Reconyx is only 1.3 MP but it is also lo glow like this camera so it is the only camera we have that is near in description to use as a guide. We will just have to see how that test comes out. I will get this camera over to Anthony so he can move it to the hill for pictures and do some trigger time testing.

10-03-2008 update:  We skipped the trigger time testing and went straight to the 50 foot deep woods testing because of the many folks who wanted to see the results. As previously stated we are going to compare this cams night function to the RM-45 because both are in the low glow category. The flash distance of the RM-45 is better at 50 feet but the Predator did a respectable job. We had set this cam up on max sensitivity to do the sensing range tests and left it there after the 50 foot deep woods flash tests. The cam ran away and took pictures one after the other until the card was full. We moved the sensitivity down and the cam now seems to function as normal. This tells us that anyone who buys one of these cameras must do a considerable amount of testing before taking it to the field so they are sure things are working correctly. These cameras appear to be not the same from camera to camera. They must be treated as individual cameras and the operator must learn the quirks of each individual camera so they do not experience what we did. The max setting would probably be fine during very hot weather. We are now down to a setting of 5 on this cam and it seems to maybe like that setting for our area. Further north where things are much colder that setting might also be too high so testing before deploying is essential. We are going to take it back up to the hill and make sure we have the sensitivity set right then pull it in this evening and try to get the trigger time testing done. Should things go haywire again we will take the other cam up there and see how it does.

Our setup was a little to the left of the aim point we needed so we will only show those pictures from the morning where the sun was behind the cam. We did have some pictures that were color lacking and was red in tint. The contrast is lacking and the color is a little washed. We are also in the process of a review on the Cudde Capture 3.0 white flash and we pulled the cards at the same time and the Cudde day time pictures appeared to be better in quality when compared side by side. The hair color on the deer was very close but the greens were very subdued on the Predator pictures. We have a new setup and different aim and we will gather more sample pictures at the proper angle. The change in sensing level did fix the run away issue we had yesterday, so it is a lesson learned. We may not get t the trigger times this evening because we have to get all the other cams ready for the trip down south to the other testing area and get them put out on some trail situations.

10-04-2008 update:  We made it through a series of night pictures and have posted the results. I would call them average for a 3.0 cam. They show a degree of blur on moving animals which seems to be the case with many we have tested this year. The sharpness of the IR pictures is somewhat less than those of the other low glow RM-45 Reconyx camera. The daytime color pictures are good but still lack sharpness. There seems to be a milk like haze in the pictures that we did not see on the day Cudde Capture that was taking pictures in a nearby area at the same time (similar lighting conditions). The trigger times came out at a solid 1 second for both with and without flash. These tests were done on the 3.0 MP setting. This is about the same as what we seen with the Scoutguard and Timber eye cameras. The Capture was a half second faster. We will say that yes they have made improvements since last year but they are not there yet. We will post some side by side pictures of the day Capture and night RM-45 to show why we said that. The capture is $150 cheaper and the RM-45 is the same price.

10-05-2008 update:  The movie mode in 15 fps were pretty good and had a little bit of jitter but mostly fluid. We did get an old doe crossing at about 40 feet and the cam picked her up about 3/4^th of the way across the field of view so on our present sensing setting we should be in the right range for the night temperatures. That movie was captured when the temperature was about 70 degrees so the sensing is close to the flash range. I am beginning to believe that out theory that the longer flash in movie mode scaring deer more than the flash from the single IR flash is maybe not correct. In this camera there is a delay period of around 18 seconds when set to the 10 setting. The duration of the flash appears to be around 2 seconds then goes off for 18 seconds and if the deer is still watching (motion) then this will repeat and this will result in a series of blinks 2 seconds long and off for 18 seconds. In the movie mode the flash comes on and remains on for about 24 seconds during a 20 second movie then drops off for the delay period. This longer exposure does not seem to matter as much to the deer as the quick blip blip of the single capture setting. The same deer seen in our movies are the same deer that noticed the flash in the single capture mode. In the movie mode they seemed to not pay the flash nearly as much attention. Please view the sample pictures and movies to see what I am trying to describe. We have been using the RM-45 as a cam to compare to because we only have these two cams in the low glo configuration. Our field tests with the RM-45 on much wilder deer showed that the deer did at any time catch the camera flash and it was set at eye level, yet this cam does get noticed by the deer. To try to figure out why we took both cams in the dark room and set them up for a flash study. The flash on the RM-45 is just a blip (instantaneous), the Predator flash comes on and stays on for 2 seconds. The difference in visible glow was less on the Predator than the RM-45. The duration of the flash is probably the culprit as to why the deer see the Predators flash and don’t notice the Reconyx’s flash. This trying to get inside a deer’s head and know what is going on is causing me slowly crave some long neck brown bottle refreshments in a quantity that is probably not considered healthy. I would have to see a long range study to see if by setting your camera to a longer delay would remove the degree of spook that the flash on flash off causes. It definitely appears that the shorter flash does make a difference. The repeated 2 second interval flash is in my judgment why it caught the eye of these deer. We also considered the noise factor (filter clunk) but the pictures were not at the transition time so there should not have any movement of the filters in either cam. We are now looking at shutter noise to see if there is any. My old ears are not up to the task so Anthony has it in the bathroom with the lights off and I hear some strange noises that I don’t think are shutter noises. Well he came out and stated that he could not hear any shutter noise so we are going to have to believe that it is the flash and not any noise causing the attention.