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Timber Eye / Remington Ghost Camera Review Page

 


Timber Eye THx5.0 IR

Battery Holder:


SD Card with Trojan:

 

Please note: The review below is of the original model we purchased.  Following the original review is the updated review (REVISITED) that we started some weeks later after getting updated cameras from the manufacturer.

Timber Eye (or Remington Ghost) THx5.0 IR (red)/white flash review 06-11-2008

Way back when I first began to see a little data on this cam I began to track down the source. This is a company down in Texas and I made several calls to them to try to find out more and all about the availability of this camera. They basically blew me off and would not give me any information. Later I found that Cabelas was going to handle this product so I placed an order which got delayed by more than a month. Well yesterday to my surprise the thing showed up at my door along with several other cameras from different places. I pulled it out of the box and my expectations for this $115 camera were pretty low. My expectations  were not very high but I was totally impressed by the vast array of features stuck in a low cost cam. Both red and white flash, movie, three delays from 30 seconds to 2 min. and having a 5 MP ratting. It came with a lock, card, adjustable mounting bracket, and cable to hang it on the tree. The instructions were some of the best I have seen written. Of the several cams I had to play with I chose this one to just get a feel how it was going to do. The programming was super. From then is when everything just went to hell. The cam would not work in the IR position, would not work in the movie position, appeared to corrupt the card which required re formatting, and in the USB setup it locks up my computer. So its back in the box on its way back to Cabelas and the folks in Texas need to go back to the drawing board. I will get a replacement but as of now I would run like hell if someone tried to give you one of these cameras.

06-29-2008 update:  Our replacement has not arrived but I have spent a good amount of time searching the outdoor forums looking for any data that is out on this camera. It has been mostly negative with the exception of a couple reviews that are on the Cabelas site. They both state that this is just the best camera that ever was produced. It is very strange but both of these reviewers are just down the road from the suppliers. Could it be they got something the rest of the folks didn’t? very strange.
 

07-10-2008 update:  Cabelas managed to accept the return and get another cam back to me and it arrived just a short while ago. This one out of the box would not work at all. The plastic casting on this cam is very crude and things just do not line up as expected. The battery holder has shoulders that are high enough to keep the positive end of the battery from hitting the plate. I found this after determining that the cells were just fine so something else must be wrong. One of the cells shoulder would hit the crude plastic area holding the contact plate in place and keep it from making contact. I slipped a penny in the space and the cam came on. Programming was a snap, I chose IR single and I was ready for a quick operational check. I installed the 256 card that came with the cam and fired it up and put in the testing lane. I watched the front of the cam and when the lights all went out I triggered the can and the IR array came alive. I repeated this several times and shut it down and pulled the card. This is where everything went south in a hurry. My computer lit up like the forth of July and Norton went into full swing. There was a Trojan Horse (virus) on that card. I was able to clear the damage and cleaned the card.

Click here to read Symantec Information on this trojan.

Note: More recently there have been reports from buyers that there is also a virus on the CDROM that ships with the product. (07/29/2008)


The Quick check was again repeated and the results were exactly the same as with the original cam. The camera will shutter and the IR array goes off but the timing is off and all pictures came out black. This is the same in the movie mode, there is no IR illumination. The incandescent mode did work but the pictures are so bad that everything is washed out.
 

I did a quick trigger time and in the incandescent mode it was over two seconds. This cam is just about as non functional as you can get. Remington should tie a knot in someone’s private parts over this mistake. They have there name on the clone of this cam. I stated before that you should run like hell if some one tried to give you one of these, well I mean it. This concludes this review and please do not ever send me another one of these to review.   


07-21-2008 Update:  Received a note from the Timber Eye customer service folks thanking us for the review. They also said that they were in the process of correcting the issues found in our review. The Trojan virus is supposed to only be on some but not on others. So far we have seen it present on 100% but we have not seen everything that was shipped. We hope that things get aligned down in Texas and they start to put out some usable products. We feel that if they were to find another vendor for their cards and work on the firmware that controls the IR array timing and figure out what is wrong with the weak color in the daytime/white flash shots they will have a pretty good cam. When they get all this sorted out maybe someone down in Texas will send us a real usable camera and we will do another review.
 

07-29-2008 update:  This morning when I made my run through the many outdoor forums that I screen for camera issues I came across an interesting bit of information in relation to this camera. We did not test for this our selves but it was stated that because of our review on this cam, one of the new owners scanned the SD card and found no virus on the card but when he scanned the enclosed CD that came with the camera it had a virus on it. So now we will have two areas to look at if we ever get hold of another one of these cameras.

07-30-2008 update:  Well one of  Wally Worlds finest with the Ghost emblem written on the box just under the word Remington came in through the door about noon today. This just happened to correspond with a visit from Anthony who was bringing me a couple more cameras to do some work on. We installed the Energizers in the cam and set it down so we could pay full attention to scanning the SD card and CD that came with the camera. To our surprise we found no virus on these items which both had the Remington symbol on them. I installed one of my known good cards in the cam and tried to fire it up. It was dead as a door nail. I examined the battery compartment and this camera also had the crude plastic casting that hit the shoulder of the left hand battery located just under the LCD display. The only way I could get the camera to come on was to again insert a penny between the battery terminal and the plate. Both Anthony and I ran the cam through a few tests and none of the IR modes functioned. This is very much a duplication of the same faults found on all of these Timber Eye/Remington Ghost cameras tested so far. I spent some quality time with the sporting goods manager of one of the super Walmart’s locally and showed him the defective battery holder and he was not very happy about this product and was going to have to take some of these issues up stream in their system. I have now seen cameras from several sources and none of them worked. Until the folks pull these cams back and re engineer the issues we would not recommend anyone to purchase one of these cameras. I sure could have used this type of programming on those old Cudde cameras that use to give us a hassle during the programming.

 

08-11-2008 update:  This update is just going to deal with what I have picked off our forum and other out door forums. We had one fellow who had read our warning about these cams having in some cases a virus on the card and CD that came with the camera. Well this fellow went out of his way and called their customer service which told him that all the information that he was reading on the internet was wrong and that there was no issues with the camera. He then fielded the camera for a week and when he pulled the card to see his pictures his computer immediately was infected with the Trojan virus that we had warned about. Further check also found that the disk that came with the camera was also infected and resulted in a cleaning operation on his computer. We also had another fellow who was testing the Ghost in a manner similar to our tests and he found that his unit also ceased to work in the exact same manner as all cameras we have tested to date. The IR flash goes out of sync with the shutter resulting black night pictures and movies. This issue is the predominate issue and has been reported many times on the forums. If anyone receives a report from their customer service stating that what we have reported is not valid please mail Anthony or me with the time/date that the phone conversation took place and to whom you have spoken and the number that was used to contact that individual. This type of failure notification should be of great value to those who are trying to sell this product and to the consumer who is putting out their hard earned money to purchase their product. If this product had flown without issue we would have reported the exact facts as strongly as we report the negative issues.

08-12-2008 update:  I cant believe that I have spent another half day working with the issues involving this camera. There is a string of issues that are real and now out of the many and now we may have an answer to at least one. The camera looses its IR flash capability within a couple days. The first issue that impacts on this issue is that the camera does not advance the clock setting while the camera is in the off position. Lets say that you are getting ready to go the field tomorrow morning so being the good scout that you are, you are prepared. You get all your stuff together and put a clean card and fresh batteries in your cam and turn it off and place it in the bag to go with you in the morning. In the morning you are at the property and pull out the bag and set it up on your trusty old ATV for the trip to that pre selected tree in the best area that you wish to survey. You make it through all the spider webs and vines to the selected area and with the entire scent control thing you have done, you approach the tree that you have selected. Out come the bungee cords and the cam gets armed and hung with careful attention to aim and the north south orientation. You exit the area and head back to the ranch to wait out the week or so to get the results of this trip. Just in gas it has been a bewildering task. Two weeks go by and you spend the gas and go through all the necessary scent control to make it back to the camera. You find the spot and slip up and change out the cards and head back to the ranch. Rush into the computer room and slip the card into the reader now you have a big surprise. All the night pictures are black and you are pissed. Why in the hell did this happen? It all boils down to some pretty sorry firm ware that runs the Ghost/Timber Eye. The internal camera is the same as the one that Bushnell uses in their 119305 and they have a way around this problem. You can program the time that the camera will be in the IR flash mode depending on what time of year that dusk and dawn happens. Plus their clock will still function with the switch off. Let’s go back when Joe camera user set up for that trip to the field and did all the prep to his Ghost for the following day trip. Well his setup to the cam was great. What he didn’t know is that the clock goes to sleep when the switch is off and built into his new Ghost camera is a program that is telling the camera not to function in IR unless it is between 1930 evening to 0530 morning. Remember Joe camera user turned his cam off after doing all the programming and putting in a fresh card in preparation for the next day’s trip. What happened is he stopped the clock and the camera was about 12 hours off by the time he hung it on the tree. Communications with the folks that are supposed to be on top of this have verified this. This is a real sorry setup and according to them will be changed with some type of firmware change. Until this happens we will still not recommend this camera. Remember this is just one of the issues and there are several still pending. Who is going to help Joe camera user to get back the sock full of gas money and time this cost. Better documentation is in order when a product strays out of the normal way of function. We will remain on top of this issue until we get notified that things have been fixed. Mean while if you are a Ghost or Timber Eye owner already set the clock immediately after hanging it on the tree and hope that the season is in sink with the dusk and dawn happening at 0530 and 1930 daily. If it doesn’t then that will be another issue with this camera. If daylight is slid over to about 0730 (which it does) then you will have another two hours of black pictures. Enough said about this camera because I have already spent enough on this project to buy me a couple tanks of premium.

 

08-13-2008 update:  We were asked to remove the warning about the virus because some percentage of the first lot of cams were supposedly the only ones shipped with this issue. Well we just received another verification of a card and disk being infected and was transferred to the owners computer. The process of cleaning this off the computer is not fun. This issue about the virus was presented to the folks in Texas (Wild Game Innovations) and asked about a recall. They felt that being the fact that the percentage of infected camera’s was small they would not deal with a recall. They said they would give a new card to anyone who got infected. They also stated that they felt that all infected cameras have already been purchased. Well we know as of day before yesterday that was not true. Now let’s say you were one of the unlucky folks that got infected and had to spend the time to clean your computer or pay some one to come and do it for you. You now have a clean card and a clean computer and life goes on less a few coins from the old wallet and you can re deploy the cam. Every thing is now back to normal, maybe, how about the fellow who did not have virus protection or it was out dated and did not catch the Trojan? He is now open to the net and can have his computer cruised by those sorry SOB’s who put the virus on the card. Again I will say, if you have one of these cameras and want to keep it, clean the card before using it and do not run the disk unless you check it also. If you do not have proper virus protection on your computer just do not use this camera or use a known good card or return it for a replacement from another company or get your money back. I wonder what would happen if someone suffered a serious case of identity fraud and lost a ton of money and it ruined their credit? Would a recall be in order?


 

     

Trigger Time
 
Flash Range
Samples Low Res
 
Samples High res



 
Movie Samples

 


Remington Ghost

CAMO

(purchased from Academy Sports)

Interior, Exterior and mounting bracket:

Durcacell's pos post  longer than energizers

$2 security fix for Academy Sports Remington Ghost with the use of Python cable:

Please note: The review below is of the original model we purchased.  Following the original review is the update review that we started some weeks later after getting updated cameras from the manufacturer.

Academy Sports Remington camo Ghost Red/white flash 5 MP camera  08-07-2008

Ghost; The soul of something dead believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear in the form of that object.

That is what came out of my little pocket dictionary to explain the words I need to understand. After all the dead Timber Eye and Remington cameras that have passed through here It was a new feeling to finally find something that seemed to return from the dead. The old black Timber eye/Ghost cameras that we had previously attempted to test has given away to the Academy Sports camo Ghost. It still says Remington on it but it is a different animal. Why do I say that? Well this one actually functions. I caught a glimpse of this camera on one of the forums and the folks seemed to like it. It is somewhat cheaper than the wally world version plus it comes in a very attractive longleaf camo pattern. I searched out and found us one to play with, hoping that the odds were in our favor that we would actually find a camera from this supplier that actually functioned as advertised. Out of the box the camo front door gives way to the same interior as the other TI cameras that we tested. Out came the Energizers and a big light went off telling me to stop and do a little virus scanning prior to continuing. The card was clean. I went ahead and installed the batteries and that same old battery compartment gave me the same no function issue as all had done. The penny on the terminal would have probably worked but I bit my tongue and pulled the Energizers and headed off to the store for some Duracell’s. The energizer cells have a short positive terminal and this makes the shoulder of the batteries hit the crude plastic piece that holds the plates that make contact with the positive end of the cell. I measured the Duracell batteries that I had in my re cycle bin and found that the positive terminal actually sticks out further than that of the energizer cells. So this camera is probably dedicated to use the Duracell’s only. I wonder if the folks at Remington have a little stock in the Duracell factory. Once the batteries (copper tops) were installed the camera would turn on and allow me to program it. I set up for a series of tests to check basic function and all worked. I then did the three trigger time tests IR, White flash, and without flash. I believe that the unofficial times will be less than 2 seconds. I can’t believe it we are actually going to be able to review this camera. Rated at 5 MP QXGA which actually means that it is somewhere around 3.2 MP that is computer doctored to make it sound more than it is. The file size comes out at the 5 MP size. A strange findings is the image data (exif) reflects that the camera used in this cam appears to be exactly the same as the camera used in the Bushnell 119305, just in a different box and probably guided by different firm ware. As with all previously tested cameras from this outfit the gasket that is in the door to keep the water out fell out when the door was opened the first time. It was all wrinkled up as if the door had been closed on it when it was twisted. I managed to re install the gasket and get it to stay in place so I could continue the testing. The adjustable bracket that comes with his cam was rejected as a bad idea for me. The hardware store that you must have to use it is just not worth the effort given its limited function. The degree of tools required to field this bracket makes it lose its usefulness. The bracket must be put on the tree then the cam must be screwed to the bracket from the inside which requires that you carry a screwdriver with you and if you use the lag bolts something strong enough to get that job done. If you do like me and decide not to use this bracket then the holes must have a piece of tape put over the holes on the back of the cam to keep out the critters that want to set up housekeeping inside your cam. The first sample pictures that I did in the yard showed that the color is very weak and the pictures lacked a degree of contrast but very readable. The IR (red flash) pictures were better but still fuzzy. The movie mode worked but appeared to be somewhat low in quality. This cam if it is still working will make it to the hill to get the regular sample pictures and videos as we do with all other cams. For a camera that is just over the century mark in price it seems to function pretty good. I will try to get the sensing range done along with the two flash range tests and then get it put out for a look at the fuzzy brown corn eaters that seem to hang out around the feeders.

08-08-2008 update:  Checked the cam this morning after being turned off over night and found that the date/time does not advance with the power turned off. You must reset the time/date every time you turn the camera on just before deploying it. This would probably be a real hassle on most cameras but this camera has super simple programming that is easy to do before closing the door and walking off.

 

08-09-2008 update:  Made the short trip to get this cam over to Anthony to get the trigger tests done and move it out to the testing area for some sample pictures. This was a very strange situation. While doing the trigger time tests, Anthony noticed something floating off and disappearing. Well it was the soul of yet another Wildgame Innovations camera that just died. We now know why they chose the Ghost name this model. We have given an extreme amount of time to this camera in hopes that the supplier to all these retailers would settle down and get things fixed. We would not recommend this camera to anyone. Let’s see what comes out of the clouds next year from that company. They certainly drew from the toilet this year. These folks do such a good job with their other products lets hope they get hold of this blunder and get it fixed and bring it up to the standard of the other products they sell.

 

08-11-2008 update:  This update is just going to deal with what I have picked off our forum and other out door forums. We had one fellow who had read our warning about these cams having in some cases a virus on the card and CD that came with the camera. Well this fellow went out of his way and called their customer service which told him that all the information that he was reading on the internet was wrong and that there was no issues with the camera. He then fielded the camera for a week and when he pulled the card to see his pictures his computer immediately was infected with the Trojan virus that we had warned about. Further check also found that the disk that came with the camera was also infected and resulted in a cleaning operation on his computer. We also had another fellow who was testing the Ghost in a manner similar to our tests and he found that his unit also ceased to work in the exact same manner as all cameras we have tested to date. The IR flash goes out of sync with the shutter resulting black night pictures and movies. This issue is the predominate issue and has been reported many times on the forums. If anyone receives a report from their customer service stating that what we have reported is not valid please mail Anthony or me with the time/date that the phone conversation took place and to whom you have spoken and the number that was used to contact that individual. This type of failure notification should be of great value to those who are trying to sell this product and to the consumer who is putting out their hard earned money to purchase their product. If this product had flown without issue we would have reported the exact facts as strongly as we report the negative issues.

08-12-2008 update:  I cant believe that I have spent another half day working with the issues involving this camera. There is a string of issues that are real and now out of the many and now we may have an answer to at least one. The camera looses its IR flash capability within a couple days. The first issue that impacts on this issue is that the camera does not advance the clock setting while the camera is in the off position. Lets say that you are getting ready to go the field tomorrow morning so being the good scout that you are, you are prepared. You get all your stuff together and put a clean card and fresh batteries in your cam and turn it off and place it in the bag to go with you in the morning. In the morning you are at the property and pull out the bag and set it up on your trusty old ATV for the trip to that pre selected tree in the best area that you wish to survey. You make it through all the spider webs and vines to the selected area and with the entire scent control thing you have done, you approach the tree that you have selected. Out come the bungee cords and the cam gets armed and hung with careful attention to aim and the north south orientation. You exit the area and head back to the ranch to wait out the week or so to get the results of this trip. Just in gas it has been a bewildering task. Two weeks go by and you spend the gas and go through all the necessary scent control to make it back to the camera. You find the spot and slip up and change out the cards and head back to the ranch. Rush into the computer room and slip the card into the reader now you have a big surprise. All the night pictures are black and you are pissed. Why in the hell did this happen? It all boils down to some pretty sorry firm ware that runs the Ghost/Timber Eye. The internal camera is the same as the one that Bushnell uses in their 119305 and they have a way around this problem. You can program the time that the camera will be in the IR flash mode depending on what time of year that dusk and dawn happens. Plus their clock will still function with the switch off. Let’s go back when Joe camera user set up for that trip to the field and did all the prep to his Ghost for the following day trip. Well his setup to the cam was great. What he didn’t know is that the clock goes to sleep when the switch is off and built into his new Ghost camera is a program that is telling the camera not to function in IR unless it is between 1930 evening to 0530 morning. Remember Joe camera user turned his cam off after doing all the programming and putting in a fresh card in preparation for the next day’s trip. What happened is he stopped the clock and the camera was about 12 hours off by the time he hung it on the tree. Communications with the folks that are supposed to be on top of this have verified this. This is a real sorry setup and according to them will be changed with some type of firmware change. Until this happens we will still not recommend this camera. Remember this is just one of the issues and there are several still pending. Who is going to help Joe camera user to get back the sock full of gas money and time this cost. Better documentation is in order when a product strays out of the normal way of function. We will remain on top of this issue until we get notified that things have been fixed. Mean while if you are a Ghost or Timber Eye owner already set the clock immediately after hanging it on the tree and hope that the season is in sink with the dusk and dawn happening at 0530 and 1930 daily. If it doesn’t then that will be another issue with this camera. If daylight is slid over to about 0730 (which it does) then you will have another two hours of black pictures. Enough said about this camera because I have already spent enough on this project to buy me a couple tanks of premium.

08-13-2008 update:  We were asked to remove the warning about the virus because some percentage of the first lot of cams were supposedly the only ones shipped with this issue. Well we just received another verification of a card and disk being infected and was transferred to the owners computer. The process of cleaning this off the computer is not fun. This issue about the virus was presented to the folks in Texas (Wild Game Innovations) and asked about a recall. They felt that being the fact that the percentage of infected camera’s was small they would not deal with a recall. They said they would give a new card to anyone who got infected. They also stated that they felt that all infected cameras have already been purchased. Well we know as of day before yesterday that was not true. Now let’s say you were one of the unlucky folks that got infected and had to spend the time to clean your computer or pay some one to come and do it for you. You now have a clean card and a clean computer and life goes on less a few coins from the old wallet and you can re deploy the cam. Every thing is now back to normal, maybe, how about the fellow who did not have virus protection or it was out dated and did not catch the Trojan? He is now open to the net and can have his computer cruised by those sorry SOB’s who put the virus on the card. Again I will say, if you have one of these cameras and want to keep it, clean the card before using it and do not run the disk unless you check it also. If you do not have proper virus protection on your computer just do not use this camera or use a known good card or return it for a replacement from another company or get your money back. I wonder what would happen if someone suffered a serious case of identity fraud and lost a ton of money and it ruined their credit? Would a recall be in order?

09-04-2008 update:  Spent a lot of time scanning again and trying to see if there has been any improvement since the last report. Well the answer is a definite no but the report coming from the field from the many dissatisfied owners who took the number off the box and called to complain found: “Well maybe there is an update in the wind”. Short of throwing away all previously manufactured cams and replacing those with a new functional camera would be the only upgrade that folks should accept. This review is closed.

 
Trigger Time
(IR array malfunctioned)
Flash Range
(white flash)

(IR flash)
Samples Low Res
 
Samples High res



 
Movie Samples

 



Battery Holder mods:

Revisit Remington Ghost/Timber Eye dual flash (red/white) digital camera review 09-12-2008

We kind of think that the folks across the pond threw this company a curve when they originally shipped both models of this camera. We found some serious issues and after having seven failures we had given up. Well this company didn’t give up and went to work. They did not correct things like the clock not advancing in the off position. So it is very important that if you take this cam to the field in the off position you must set the date/time at the tree after it is turned on. My first check when both the Remington and TI came out of the box was to see if the battery holder would accept Energizer batteries and power up. If you look at the picture on the sidebar you can see that the plastic that hit the shoulder of the battery on all previously tested units has been milled off and this allows the positive end of the cell to rest against the plate. This is most definitely an improvement and the cam fired right up.

To know if you have an updated battery holder you should compare the plastic shoulders that hold the bottom left plate for thickness. If the left shoulder (pos. end of first cell) is about half the thickness as the negative end of the 2nd cell then it is upgraded.

The next way to tell is set up your cam in the on position and select still/incandescent. Then you switch the cam from still to movie and the incandescent will switch to LED.

They also changed the automatic time (not selectable) that the IR flash will work. This setting is 5 PM to 7 AM which covers most of the low light conditions for this time of year. Let’s hope we do not get that dreaded whiteout during the transition of day to evening and morning to daylight. A quick check of trigger times this morning on both units showed about a 2 second time (unofficial). There was another pleasant surprise with both of these cameras. This is a very warm morning and humid 75 degrees. The sensing range caught me at 50 feet every time I would move.

Well so far both cams have operated without issue, let’s hope they stay that way. This has been a double function review with two exact cams being tested at the same time. Flash range was tested on both in IR only because we could not get that last time. We found both good out to past 40 feet but experienced a lot of IR burn on close objects. Being the market is somewhat starved for functional low priced white flash cameras, since the cudde capture has fallen off the edge of the earth. That is where this camera has a real good chance. Now the only cam that is in competition is the I-590 Stealth which is very functional but has a slower trigger time. We are very happy that this thing is starting to fly in the right direction. We will grab some deep woods 50 ft flash tests then see about getting some sample pictures and movies in both the flash configurations. Anthony will also re do the trigger times on both of these cameras to get the official times. I do not have to go over the programming because all that was covered in the first reviews. It is off to the hill and try to get all the great pictures that folks need to see. Out thoughts this morning are also about the folks in the camera companies that are in Texas and our friends near the gulf with the big storm bearing down. We wish them the best and hope that they and their families are safe.

09-13-2008 update:  One thing that I forgot to mention is that the issue with the thumbnails being black when windows opened up from the card. This has been corrected and works as normal.

09-16-2008 update:  Both cameras have managed to hang in there and capture pictures. Remington (this update) when set to color white flash are nearly mono chrome as far as color in the pictures. Even though there is a lack of color the pictures show a degree of sharpness and detail. In the IR flash the range is fairly short but does work and again the pictures are pretty good when the animal is in the main flash. The sensing seems to be very good and even though it is narrow it did capture 850 pictures in two days. The main and somewhat serious problem that we see now with this camera is the fixed times for IR flash. It is difficult to pick days that have the transition from day to night and back to day at the 5 in the morning and 7 at night timeframe. We got about two hours of whiteout pictures on this cam during the transition. This just happens to be the main time that folks want to see what is moving. Bushnell is built on the same design and both share the same image sensor. Bushnell has a means to program the start/stop times so that the flash closely matches the current time of year. The main thing that I must stress is this camera does work and if it wasn’t for a couple of issues they would be falling off the shelf to consumers. We are going to keep on working with these two cameras and see if we can figure out just the best way to deploy these cameras. When set to the color white flash mode we got very little color in the pictures except for a slight amount at night with flash. The daylight sensor We are trying to figure out when this cam is in the color white flash mode is the transition controlled by a light sensor or is it still being controlled by the fixed times. We have not yet pulled the card on the Timber Eye and it has been set to the IR red flash mode. Being both cams are the same we can run parallel tests in both modes.  The next update will be dealing with the TI in IR.

09-17-2008 update:  We got out to the Timber Eye cam and pulled the card and it is also plagued with whiteout and black out problems. Though there is a definite lack of color the daytime pictures are pretty good once you get past that period when the cam is trying to figure out if it is day time or night. The IR pictures are good also as long as the animal is in the main flash splash. Again this cam does work but has that transition issue as did the Remington. Movies are next.

09-19-2008 update:  We have had another few days and both cameras are still working and we were able to capture some movies but the black out thing followed us over here to. In the mornings after 7 AM until there is enough light all the movies were black. Once there was enough light the camera started to take readable videos. The 320X240 is fixed and the frame rate is 7.5. This camera is like a low dollar point and shoot camera that has no adjustments, everything is fixed and you have to live with how it operates because you do not have the option to change anything except the modes. The IR mode is the only mode of operation on this camera that functioned fairly well. The mono day/night pictures gave enough detail for trail operations with the exception of that fixed flash on off situation which caused the loss of pictures during a very critical time of day. We do see an improvement over the first 7 cameras we had our hands on. These two cameras do work but have some areas that need to be changed and I feel by this time next year we will see a better version. Off to the big woods for some field operations.  

 

 

Trigger Time Ghost
with No flash 1 Second

with IR flash 1.25 Seconds

with Std Flash 2 Seconds
Trigger Time TimberEye
with No flash 1 second

with IR flash 1.25 Seconds

with Std Flash 2 seconds
IR Flash Ghost
IR Flash TimberEye
White flash samples
IR Flash Samples
 
Ghost Movie Sample montage
Click Here

TimberView

 Timberview 1.3 MP white flash camera review 10-30-2008

This is the little brother to the other Wildgame innovations cameras. The Timber eye and the Remington Ghost are the same cameras with a different name on the front. As with the Cudde Capture this is a very basic camera that only takes pictures and no movies. It is programmable as far as time and date plus the delay period. You can also select day only, night only, and 24 hour operations. Out of the box this camera would not work. I messed with it an hour and finally it did come on but I am unable to turn it off with the switch. I have to lift a battery to do that. This will probably change once we get some use on the buttons. The size is about 8 inches tall and 7 inches wide and about two and a half inches thick. This camera operates off of 4 C sized cells and they are in small slots under the front cover on each side of the camera. There is a set of switches and a small LCD screen and a SD card slot. The cost at Walmart is $50 and it only comes with a couple small bungee cords and nothing else. My first in house test showed that this camera does work and will take pictures. My first pictures were about the same quality as the Predator Xtinction’s pictures. This leaves something to be desired but you can tell what is in the picture but is somewhat fuzzy around the edges. I am headed outside to get some full sun shots and then see if anything improves. The pictures in full sun were not so bad and showed pretty good color. Next I ran through a series of trigger time tests and they all came out just under two seconds. This is not as fast as the Capture but it is also less than half price. The minimum delay is 30 seconds and this can be increased to one and two minutes. As with its predecessors this camera’s clock stops with the power off and so there is a need to set the time date at the tree when deploying. I did a quick sensing distance and was surprised that it would pick me up at 80 feet most every time I passed and this was done during the daytime with a temperature of 61 degrees. Looks like this camera might have a place on a tree for a while on the hill. I will try to get the flash range done in the morning. Spent some more time screwing with the on off switch and it is working somewhat now. We will see if it clears up all the way further into the review.

10-31-2008 update:  Made it through the flash range tests and it showed that this cam is good past 40 feet. The main switch is still giving a little problem but it seems to be getting better. At 41 degrees this morning I could trigger the cam at 50 feet by just waving my hand. The sensing zone is narrow like what Cuddeback uses. So far this camera has been doing things pretty good for a fifty dollar camera. The flash range tests still show that Predator cam quality, but acceptable for most applications where you do not need a big degree of detail of an animal out past 50 feet. We will get this cam on the hill and see how it does against the big fuzzy brown critters.

11-06-2008 update:  This little camera operates off 4 C cells and our first set was installed on 10-30-08 and the batteries failed on 11-5-08 and it had taken 174 pictures. This is only one week on a set of batteries. A good portion of these pictures were at night with flash. We have been favorably impressed with how well the pictures looked. We do remember it is a basic camera but seems to do well in that respect. Battery life sucks though. We will try a set of NiMH batteries and try it again. Then try a set of Lithium cells and see if they do better.

11-16-2008 update:  We ran this last week (7days) and 194 pictures on 4000 mAh NiMH rechargables. This means that it seems to last as long on rechargeables as it does on standard Energizers. And the picture count is about the same. This would probably be a pretty decent camera if we could get a couple weeks battery life because the other function is very acceptable for the price.

12-19-2008 update:  We went ahead and tested another new set of energizers and tried the battery life test again. This time we only got three days out of the cells but we had a drop in temperature to the high twenties and low thirties. We now have adapted a 14.5 Ah SLA 6volt battery to this camera and have it hung back out on the hill and we will see how long it will last. I have been asked why spend so much time trying to make this camera work? And we have to tell the folks that the white flash cameras are few and to get a good one for a good price would be very nice. The total failure of the cudde capture with its long lists of issues and failures we could have four of these cameras for the same price if we can solve the battery lice issue. Keep tuned in and we will see how it goes.

01-01-2009 update:  We are still capturing pictures and the SLA is still holding. Weather has been in the 20s and 30s at night so this is a good indication that we may get a little more life than expected. If we can get 3 weeks out of this battery and a respectable picture count then we will go ahead and do a formal external battery with proper connectors and such. Academy Sports has sold this past couple weeks a twin pack of this camera but increased to 2 MP. This twin pack was under eighty dollars so that puts the cost at forty dollars per cam. If this works out with the external battery, then a couple of the high amp hour six volt batteries would keep the cost for a two cam setup at just over a hundred dollars. We are still having on/off switch problems exactly the same as we had with the Timber eye/Remington Ghost cameras. With those two cameras the switches finally wore in and started working. This so far is about two weeks and 560 pictures. When we returned to this camera we discovered that it had only taken about 50 pictures this past week and locked up again so we are now forced to go ahead and terminate this review and call the external set up a failure and this trouble plagued camera review completed.

 

Trigger Time - a little over 2 seconds
 
Flash Range
Samples

 

 

TimberView 2.0

Timberview 2.0 white flash camera (Academy Sports) 12-18-2008 Review

 

This time we are going straight to the field and do a battery test. If that fails this little twin pack will hit the return counter and this review will be ended. The box has a big 4 week battery life sign on it so we will see.

 

12-23-2008 update:  Well as with the 1.3 the battery life was 3.5 days and 327 pictures. This is totally un acceptable so there is no use to continue this review. The .3 Timberview is on the hill with an external battery and we are going to see if it works out with any degree of success. The pictures (see samples) were not to bad and we sure wish this cam had worked out because the market needs a good reasonably priced white flash camera. I will hold these two cameras (the 2.0 came as a twin pack) until the battery test is completed on the 1.3 and if we have any good results I might try to hook one of these up and see how it does.

 

12-27-2008 update:  We started to have problems with the 1.3 cam with it locking up and we re started it and went back through the programming and did a restart to see what happens. It does appear that our hopes for this cam are starting to go away. I packed up the twin pack and headed back to the outlet and exchanged it for some green stuff and came on back to the shop. We will continue with the external setup and if it works, we will report and that procedure will also work for this camera. We have a number of pictures that we got while this cam was eating C cells and we will at least post them. As of now this review is closed.

 

Samples


 

 
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