A couple of years ago we tried the top of the line Stealth Cam DIGRC-XTR and we were super disappointed with its non performance. Now that time has passed we decided to pick a middle of the pack Stealth camera to test. This camera is in the $200.00 range and is 2.1 MP. Compact flash media cards up to 256 will work in this camera. The written instruction booklet that came with the camera is written pretty vague. I purposely attempted to program this camera without reading the instructional manual. I was successful to a degree. There were some strange icons that appeared that I had to refer to the manual to figure out there meaning. After an hour of playing the programming was complete. Most of the programming methods are in line with standard digital camera operations. This camera operates off 8 D cells or an external 6v rechargeable battery.

The external battery jack on the camera is standard and the plug is available at Radio Shack. I assembled an external power cable in about 15 minutes using a plug from Radio Shack and some wire and a couple of alligator clips. All in shop testing was done using a 6v Moultrie battery. (forgive me Moultrie folks) I purchased two high capacity 6v lead acid batteries from our local Battery Plus outlet for about $18 a piece for the extended field testing. Instruction manual says to only change out the top 4 batteries then change out the bottom 4 batteries to keep from loosing the program (date-time). This holds true when you are using only external power. I placed 4 rechargeable D cells in the top 4 holes and swapped the external battery and the program was saved. I then stored the D cells by putting one in all 4 compartments upper and lower for future battery changes. The trigger time for this camera is a solid 6 seconds and that is pretty slow. The flash appears  to be very good and will reach past 30 feet easily. The security features are basically non existent. There will be a real need for some type of theft protection to be built prior to installing this cam in the field. Field testing will be done using the 1600X1200 setting and the three star (highest) quality setting with the one minuet delay. One picture per event will also be selected. Later testing will include the movie mode.

This camera will be in the field tomorrow 11-5-05 to begin the field testing.

We received E mail from MMFord with his testimonial on this cam. Viewer stated that he was on his second set of batteries (he is using standard D cell batteries) since early July which is very good battery life. Using his figures we calculated that during that time he was getting approximately ten pictures per day with the majority being at night. He stated that he felt the pictures were good but due to the slow trigger time he had some lost pictures. We are taking a very close look at this camera and due to our past experience with Stealth and along with  the bad press viewed through out the outdoor forums. We hope that the Stealth folks have turned things around with these later model cameras. They still have some work to do on their trigger time. It appears that the battery life issue may have been addressed to a degree.

 

12-21-05 update: This camera appears to work very well, with the exception of picture quality. It is doing very good on battery life and it is sensing as well as the backup cams placed along side. The pictures are a little fuzzy but readable. When the picture quality was put to other field users on an outdoor forum we received the same remarks about the picture quality. It is a pretty good camera for the price.

 

 

STC-WD3MT,   Factory purchase.

This camera is Stealth's attempt to be in competition with the popular 3.0 Cuddeback. This company previously had this model out less the MT in its number. The MT is “moon” and “temperature” which is shown of the pictures similar to how Moultrie has it on there’s. This is a 3.0 MP camera that when compared to the Moultrie and Cuddeback, it will easily hold its own. Out of the box it appears to be the same as the WD1 and WD2. The case is the same dark OD color and latches and means to hook it to the tree are the same. When you open the case most of the buttons are the same with the addition of an adjustable sensing range dial. This camera also has a 1.8 inch view screen for viewing pictures in the field. I was able to power up this cam and do the programming in one step without going to the manual. The programming is very easy and strait forward. The manual is complete and easy to follow. After putting my hands on several of these same styled cameras I found one thing that is a real bother to me. The buttons are embossed with its task and unless you catch the light exactly right it is very hard to determine what the button is for. Dealing with so many different cameras, I have to be very careful before I hit a button to keep from making a mistake in the programming. During my military days we would swipe the buttons of our equipment with a dab of contrasting colored paint to fill in the embossed printing which seemed to solve the problem. In low light field conditions this can be a bother. The next dislike is the same as the WD1 and WD2, and that is the heavy cam and batteries in the door. This is minor but aggravating when mounting and handling this camera. Resolution can be set all the way from VGA, 1.3, 2.0, to 3.0 MP. Our tests will be at the 3.0 level. Settings to determine the picture per event can be set from one to three or 10 second 320X240 10 fps movies. The CF card is the manufactures choice for this camera, we used a Lexar 256 for our tests. A very nice feature is the lo battery indicator on the front of the camera. We have tried to get the folks at Cudde to do the same but so far it has not appeared. Trigger time is 2 to 2.5 seconds and the flash range is good out past 40 feet. Initial picture quality was judged to be sharp and clear. Below is a comparison to other 3.0 cameras. 

Ease of programming: Moultrie 3.0 and Stealth 3.0 have it all over Cuddeback here. 

Security: I would have to give this to Cuddeback and Stealth over the Moultrie.

Sensing:  Without a doubt the Stealth is first followed by the Moultrie and then the Cuddeback. Our tests proved that both the Moultrie and the Stealths took right at twice the amount of pictures as the Cuddeback with identical exposure to the target animals. 

Trigger time: Cuddeback is ½ second to 1 second, Stealth 2.0 to 2.5 seconds and Moultrie 3 seconds. All of which is very acceptable for most field uses. 

Picture quality: All three have very good pictures with the exception of the saucer eye problem Moultrie has with its flash pictures. 

Flash range: Most are equal with the Stealth maybe slightly stronger past 40 feet.

Field viewing: Only Stealth has a view screen, Moultrie and Cudde have to have an external device to view images in the field.  

Cost: Moultrie is jammed with features for around $160, Stealth comes in with a cost of  $380 and Cudde comes in at $400. 

On off switch: Both Stealth and Moultrie have this feature, Cudde does not. 

Lo battery indicator: Moultrie has a LCD display viewable from the front and Stealth uses a small light to tell you of a low battery condition. Cuddeback requires the user to go through some programming to gain this information. 

Solar panel: Both the Moultrie and the Stealth have this feature the Cudde does not. We have adapted one of our Cuddeback cameras to use  a solar panel with success now for over a year. 

External battery: Moultrie and Stealth have this feature Cudde does not. 

Door vs removable panel: Most all cameras have doors with some type of latch to close it tight for weather proofing. Moultrie and Stealth have done a very good job of this. Though it is not a big deal the Cuddeback uses a screw and detachable front panel with a small underneath place to use a lock. This has proved to be a pain in some cases where the cam is on a tree with brush close or mounted low. 

Initial conclusion is that we really like the WD3. Our wish would be that one of you manufacturers (or homebrewers) would take the Cuddeback trigger speed along with the Stealth cams sensing and put it with the Moultrie price and the result would be outstanding. The plan is that if weather permits we will be field testing very shortly.

 

 

STC-IR1 5.0MP,  Factory purchase.

When this camera came out of the box I was totally impressed with the appearance of this cam. From the views seen on the manufactures site and outlets like Cabelas, I was expecting a camera about the size of the WD1. This camera is about 11 inches tall and 9 inches wide and 4 inches thick. The camera is the typical OD color as the others we tested with a large 4 inch square IR array behind a smoked glass cover. This should provide a degree of camo for this large array.

When opened up there is the “cam in the door” thing again with the typical set of hard to read buttons and LCD display along with a view screen. The indicator sticker next to the CF card slot was somewhat confusing until I found the picture of proper card installation  in the manual. There is both a solar panel and a 12 volt receptacle on the bottom of the camera. The TV out and USB outlets are next to the CF card slot. On the inside back of the camera is a small programming instruction sticker which has printing so small that my old eyes could hardly read it. It seems that with a camera the size of a normal piece of bond paper and room for a much larger instruction sticker that manufacture would do just that.

There is a wide strap and a tree screw with a bend in it to match a threaded hole in the bottom of the camera. This proved to be not very stable or safe for a camera of this size. We chose to use the strap. The metal bar with two holes that is shipped with most Stealth cams for security is also part of the accessory package that came in the box. This means of security is pretty good when used with the Master Python cable. Care must be taken because the slot for the mounting strap and security bar is located on the back of the camera, directly behind the sensor and camera lens thus the cable has just a very narrow place to cross the front of the camera. Another suggestion is to leave the cable with enough slack to sag below the lens opening.

I went from the out of the box programming of the WD-3 MT to out of the box programming of the IR-1. I was stopped completely until I had a chance to review the manual. Even though the programming is straight forward it is not nearly as intuitive as the WD-1, 2, and 3 but with care can be accomplished. I attempted the trigger speed test about ten times and could not get anything to record to the card nor could I get the IR array to fire. I spent several hours going over every thing even to opening up a new CF card to no avail. The camera will write to its internal memory but not to the card. A quick call to their tech support and it was determined that shipping may have caused a problem. I will have to get it back to them to take a look at it so we can complete this review. Cabelas last catalog has the price on sale at $599.99.

 

The WD-1, 2, 3, and now the IR all come in the solid water tight OD green case. In place of the standard flash is an IR array which contains 27 emitters compared to the Bushnell which has only 12 and the Leaf river has 36 (both wide angle and standard) emitters. Flash range tests proved that things were well lit up at 40 feet. Programming was the same as previous models and was easy to do following instructions in the manual. Trigger time proved to be 3 seconds which is the same as the Leaf river and Cudde IR cameras. I still do not like the buttons in this camera because the embossing is hard to read unless the light is just right. Disappointing also was the absents of the lock bar that we had on some other models and should be one of the items that a user should buy (now as an accessory) $7 from Stealth. Cam security any more seems to be a big issue with most new buyers of game cameras. Stealth chose to include a nice wide strap for mounting and this along with the optional lock bar and Python lock will make securing this cam easy. Our trigger time photos are out of focus due to the clock was set inside the 5 food focal distance of this cam. Every IR camera we have tested to date with the exception of the Stealth IR1 have fuzzy night time pictures. Even with this degree of clarity found on all IR camera  night pictures they are still sharp and clear enough to pick out enough good detail for game animal evaluation. We had hoped to have several IR cams to do a side by side test but due to the issues found on the Cudde, it had to be returned. Our Recon Extreme ended up with a damaged PIR sensor lens and is on the way back to us with a new lens. So, it looks like this test will be just the Leaf River IR and WD- 2 IR for right now. Putting the 1/4^th second trigger time Bushnell IR up against these cams would not be fair. We did this with the Cudde IR and the Bushnell blew the Cudde out of the saddle. I played around with the test mode just to see what it would do at 40 feet on a 76 degree morning. I was quite impressed with the sensing range and width. With the external battery and a 2 gig card (over 6000 pictures at the high rez setting) this camera should go a couple months before it would have to be visited. I am judging the battery life from our experience with the standard WD-2 which we ran over two months without a change. Just like the Bushnell IR, it only took a few minuets to figure out that I really like this camera. We have been extremely happy with all of the WD series cameras from this company. Lets hope that the field tests don’t disappoint us with some bad things. The cost on this camera is $299.99 and if you choose to order the security bar it lists for $7 plus a dollar shipping. Should you choose to make your own security bar this can be done with a 9 inch piece of 1/8X1 ½ X9 inch piece of steel with two ½ inch holes drilled in the ends to run the python lock through. A short note about this cameras burst mode, it will take three pictures in less than a second for each triggering. This is nice for that ole buck that is following behind the doe and for certain security applications.

Our initial field test was a side by side with a Leaf River IR camera and both cameras almost the same amount of pictures. The 4 day test had 150 day and night pictures. We found that this camera actually looks low compared to the Leaf river. A good portion of the pictures were of just the lower half of the deer. We re installed it in the burst mode and made the necessary corrections to have the pictures centered and put it back out, this time in the burst mode. This was done so that we could have some nice sample pictures. During this same period of time we were running a parallel test using a couple of the Moultrie cameras. Neither of the Moultries had pictures. We have always been impressed by the sensing ability of the Leaf River cams and for this camera to get equal amount of pictures under exact conditions says a lot. Every one of the WD series Stealths have proved to be very good in the sensing department. Now lets talk picture quality. It is my impression that no IR camera to date has produced what I would call really great night pictures with the exception of the high MP Stealth IR1. All the IR cameras tested to date had acceptable picture quality for scouting cam purposes. Also most of these cams have a small difference in MP ratings which makes it hard to do across the board comparison. Cudde IR being the worst and the Bushnell IR being the best putting this cam and the Leaf River in the middle. The cudde also has the lowest MP rating and the Leaf River has the highest which says this type of comparison is un fair. One thing that is very noticeable is the strength of the IR array. This camera with its good sensing and extremely strong array needs to be placed further away from the target area 20 feet at least. The pictures of deer at 15 feet were nearly whited out in some cases. This solid and very functional camera is going to get my approval. With its great sensing ability and having a cost that is a $150 cheaper that a Cudde and $50 more than a Bushnell and the same as the Leaf River this camera is directly out front. What makes it shine over the rest, is features like being able to use external battery with solar panel, ease of programming, and acceptable picture quality (no it does not have a view screen). I know that I am going to hear it from the Leaf River fans about this because most everything about both cams are pretty equal with the exception of the Leaf Rivers softer array light which tends to make their night time pictures more grainy and fuzzy. I do not like these “quickie” charts but we are going to try to put together a page that has the pictures from each cam to show side by side comparison.

We have concluded the review on this cam and yes we do like this cam. We found that sensor on this particular camera was not as far reaching as out WD 1 but it reached well past the range of the IR flash.  

Infra Red Camera visual comparison
Pictorial Page

Stealth Prowler STC-DVIR Review 08-13-2007

I heard a noise of a box bouncing off the recliner on the front porch and went to investigate. I opened the box and it was obvious that there was something in the box but I could not see it. We only wish that the new Stealth Prowler was that concealable but it is the same OD color as all the previous WD series cameras. Scanning through the catalogs a person gets the opinion that this should be a much larger camera than the rest of the Stealth line but it is not. If you were to take a WD-2 and slice off the excess plastic along the edges in a shape similar to the aircraft that carries the same name then you would have a prowler. It is a good looking camera and the water tests showed the case to be tight though it still has the small weep holes along the bottom preventing it from being totally water proof as with the rest of the Stealth line of trail cameras. The case is solid and the latches pull things up tight. This camera supports a two lens system so that the color day and the IR night does not have to use that noisy mechanical filter found on the single lens IR cameras. Programming is the same as the WD series so there is nothing new here. Easy to program, solid case, good documentation, dual lens, and with the Stealth locking bar it will be easy to conceal. The 1 to 9 burst per IR trigger is also incorporated which is a super feature. Video is adjustable from 5 to 90 seconds (640X480) Color day rez settings are 1.3, 3.0, and 5.0 and when switched to night IR operations the options are .3, 1.3, and 2.0 MP settings. IR video night time pictures are also at the 640X480 setting. Battery condition is shown by the battery symbol as standard on all previous cams. I installed 6 new Energizer C cells to start with and we will run them until the cam shuts down. Similar to the Moultrie cams the pictures will display the date time along with moon phase and temperature. Spread across the front of the cam is an array that is 6 emitters tall and 7 wide (42 total) this should brighten up the night. Hope that it is not over kill like the retina burning flash on the I-450. Stealth’s previous IR-1 flagship cam turned out to be a banner boat because of its mechanical filter which wanted to hang up all the time. The old IR-1 turned in some of the best IR pictures we have seen to date. Maybe we will get lucky again with this sliced off box of a cam. Lens viewing angle of 52 degrees and PIR sensing out to 48 degrees would make us thing that if it is out there this camera should see it and capture it. While standing by this cam uses a small 2 mA drain which during capture increases to 180 mA of drain. Internal memory is 32 MB and camera will except up to a 2 gig SD card.. The camera lenses are glass and not plastic. Looking this good makes me want to just stay up and test this thing all night just to see how good it is. Maybe I will try to sneak at least 8 hours before the 4 AM flash and sensing rang testing starts. This morning it was another one of those 80 degree mornings so I don’t know how well the sensing is going to do in the morning.

08-20-2007 update:  We have contacted Stealth management about our trigger times with flash and it was determined that this camera has an electrical problem.  We are returning this camera to Stealth so that engineers can go through it and determine the problem.  We should receive a replacement camera very soon and will repeat our tests and continue this review.  Keep checking back for updates on this camera.

08-25-2007 update:  Another marathon trigger time episode and it shows that this replacement camera has a full 5 second better trigger time with flash. The repeated tests show a 4 second or a little less trigger time with flash. Daytime without flash remained the same at 3.5 seconds. This is in line with some of the recent cameras that we tested and we consider it acceptable. It is now in 9 burst and we will see how it functions. We will run this cam on its first set of batteries until it stops ticking to see how many pictures it takes and how long they will last.

09-01-2007 update:  The past six days this cam has been going through its operations in high, low, and movie modes. We have literally taken hundreds of pictures and hundreds of movies so far and I counted only three blank pictures with nothing in them. There have been no whiteout pictures, but what we do see is that slight blur in the pictures where the deer are moving pretty fast. This blur is common in all IR cams we have tested so far, with some like the cudde having a little more. We spent the morning going over tons of pictures and hooked a couple hundred movies together and viewed them. To put it mildly “we are impressed”. It appears that the daytime movies that are in color have a slightly less frame rate than the night IR AVIs. The sensing distance (guesstamate) was picking out animals at around 60 feet on 72 degree mornings. We had tons of pictures of deer crossing in front of the cam and were still center frame. The wide angle of this PIR lens more than makes up for the 3.5 trigger. The folks at Stealth have told us that the pre production samples that were presented to them for acceptance were all in the 1.5 to 2 second range trigger time. Post production samples pulled from the line are varying from 2 to 4 seconds. The engineers are in the process of analyzing things so maybe if it is doable we might get a fix. Could you imagine this cam with a 1 second trigger. That would be pretty nice. Then do the same to the wildview 5.0 and lookout trail cam manufacturers. The way it is working now I would not call it a slouch. Over two weeks of operation and as of this morning the batteries still showed full. We hung it back out this time in single capture basic mode for another round off sample pictures.

09-23-2007 update:  This cam was started off last month on the 18^th and has ran constantly until this morning. The C cells kept it going 36 days and the camera took 3667 pictures during that time. We had no whiteouts and the function has been very good. Two things that we noticed about what this camera does is 1. during low light conditions the pictures have very faint horizontal lines across them, and 2. when the batteries became very low the flash became very weak for the last few nighttime pictures. At the very end the pictures were black. The day pictures at that time were the normal good color. From start to finish this camera has functioned very good and has been a real pleasure to use. Stealth can be proud of this one and if they ever get around to providing a fix to lower the trigger time this will be one hell of a camera. Put this cam on a good external SLA battery and I would expect two to three months of continuous pictures. We have a few more tests to do before we hang up the finished sign on this cam.

 

 

Stealth Cam “Patroller” STC-SLC2B review 06-04-2008

Over the past year while scanning all the outdoor forums looking for field data on scouting cams, I noticed many threads where folks had their hunt camp, shed, cabin, and barn broke into by some low life trespasser. The solution has been that folks had to conceal a trail camera to watch the property and this solution sometimes meant the loss of the trail camera installed to catch a picture of the offender. Week before last I found on the net while surfing for some camera data this new type of motion light and camera combination. I had asked Stealth if they thought that this product deserved a review but I got no response. Being this seems to be so closely associated with hunting and scouting cameras I went ahead and purchased one to test and report on.

Out of the box I noticed a number of things that I did not like. The first thing was the instruction pamphlet and the way that the programming was handled. Then there is no on off switch for the camera portion of this device. The design is intended to be permanently installed as a motion sensor light. When this is done, the camera is on the bottom and is concealed very nicely. It takes a close look to actually pick out that there is a camera tucked into this setup. With it being at the bottom of the lamp it is nearly impossible to read the LCD and do the programming. The bracket will allow the cam to be tipped up slightly and this helps a little but standing on a ladder and trying to see under the camera proved problematic for me. It requires that you have the instructions in hand to do the programming because the procedure is outside the normal methods folks are used to on trail cameras. Having to push two buttons at once and holding others for 2 seconds and then re programming in another area once the first portion was done. Being very familiar with every brand of trail camera, I usually can just do the programming without ever looking at the instructions. This is one of our tests to find out how intuitive the programming is. It took me a good long time to finally accomplish the programming and do some walk tests.

I shut the Patroller off to remove the card and found when I did this that I lost the program and had to go through it again. Power failures would also wipe out the programming. Drag the ladder out and stand on my head again for another period of time so I could re install the program.

This device will take up to a 2 gig SD card and at its 2 MP rating set on high it will capture 3328 pictures. Low setting will give you 5120 pictures and on movie mode you can get 1024 ten second videos. The halogen lamp that came with it was 500 watts which I swapped out for a 150 for these tests. Program allows for single picture per trigger of a selectable burst mode can be programmed in for multi shots while motion is present. The lamp can be timed from 1 to 5 minutes per trigger. A day light sensor will keep the lamp from coming on during the day but the camera will still function. There is a 16MB internal memory that cam be used if there is no card installed. The PIR sensor looks out to about 30+ feet depending on the outside temperature and has a 48 degree sweep. I had been using a scandisk 64 and I could not get any pictures, I swapped this out for another brand and when I turned the light back on it kept the program (?????). I will have to play with this a little more. As of now I still have not got the thing to take pictures. I will leave it dormant for a while to make sure that I am past any delay period and see if I can capture at least one image before I finish pulling out the last few strands of hair I have. This cam appears to be very card sensitive. The off brand card that used worked fine and I was able to capture some very good color daytime pictures that still had the time date stamp across the bottom. I will have to wait for this evening to see how the night pictures come out. The night time pictures proved to be only fair and this is partly due to the smaller sized lamp which I installed for these shorter distances. The most disturbing thing is that out of a multitude of triggers, it failed to catch me in any of them. I was able to cross in front of the cam at 17 feet very slowly. The lamp would come on but when I checked the card there was no pictures of me. I then would stand in front of the cam and then it would catch me but the trigger time is so slow that at a normal pace it would fail to catch a person crossing in front of the camera. Pointed down a driveway where a auto or person was there for a longer period of time it would probably work fine.

The conclusion is that a very well placed and concealed scouting camera with IR flash and fast trigger would serve this situation better. Once installed looking at an area where the target would be there for an extended period of time this device would probably work fine and just leave it alone and turned on until an obvious intrusion has been determined then check the card for possible evidence. In this case when the card is full the oldest picture is eliminated and the last picture is recorded. This review has been concluded and this device is now in the recycle bin with some other refuse.

Sample pictures (I resized these from the originals - These are smaller)

Stealth Cam STC-V650 (WD-6) Review 06-25-2008

Camera arrived in a sealed bubble pack and through the plastic cover it appeared to be a very good looking camera. Once out of the plastic you can see that it is the same WD case with two plastic adhesive camo strips on each side of the face of the cam. There was a big fingerprint smear on the main camera lens. When I opened the cam the LCD display had part of the plastic removed and there were prints on this screen also. The internal memory also showed use. Making a quick trip through the instructions showed me that they have made some very nice changes. The adjustable sensitivity knob and the solar panel switch. The front of the cam has that great flash they have had in the past. Below that is the LCD display for picture count and in the same panel there is the low battery indicator and test indicator. The PIR sensor is the same wide angle type that was seen on all the WD series cams. At the bottom is the external battery jack and now the new solar panel jack that is used along with the switch inside. Latches and water seal remain the same and very functional. The ¼ X 20 threaded socket for tripod or tree screw remains also. Open the case and at the top is the RFT LCD display. Below is the 6 C cell compartment with cover. The switch panel includes the on off along with the standard programming buttons. These are menu, up, down, and confirm. The new solar battery switch is just after that. The only other things under the cover are the SD card slot, TV out, and USB port. Going over the specifications I see that the image sensor is a 2.0 CMOS rated. The advertised max MP rating for this cam is 6.0 MP. Boy that is one hell of an interpolation stretch. I think I would have to just run this cam at 3.0 MP setting. The settings cam go from .3, 1.3, 3.0, to 6.0 MP which is pretty standard. The picture capture is either single, burst, or AVI video at 320X240. The video is at 10 frames per second but can be stretched out to 90 seconds. The PIR sensor looks out at 48 degrees and the image sensor can se 52 degrees. I spent a considerable length of time doing the basic (not official) trigger time test. The best that I saw was 6 seconds. The settings were at 6.0 MP and single capture with flash. If this holds true this will prove to be a very short review. Moultrie I-40 slid to 3 seconds and the folks panicked when the seen what had happened from 07 to the 08 models. The troubling things I see as of now is the stretch from a 2.0 MP sensor to 6.0 and the slow trigger. Lets hope that when we really get into this thing we start to see some better function. Flash range tests will happen sometime after 4 AM tomorrow morning then off to the field for a few test pictures and videos if we can get the deer to hang around long enough.