I spent the afternoon changing out the cards in order to see just how well this camera worked. Using the 30 second delay I had a 256 card stuffed in no time with some pretty good pictures and AVI’s. I believe that the movie mode is what makes this camera so appealing. When I had direct sun as shown in the users manual the color was bight, sharp, and clear. The short 10 second movies were very good also. My surprise came when I played the first movie and it has sound incorporated in the movie. The pictures displayed on the internet and manual of this camera does not show the microphone holes but a quick look located the microphone just above the manual shutter button. The suggested retail price is $249 but might have a street price lower as these things make their way into the marketplace. Today has been a pure pleasure working with this camera and I have about a hundred ideas of some other uses that I plan to try with this cam after we get the main data produced for this review.
 

02-01-2008 update:  We have kicked and prodded this little cam through every task and it has not failed us yet. This niche in the market is starting to catch on because I now see where there is another company that has entered this market. I have set up to use the remote to capture passing critters but as luck has had it, I have ran out of time watching before the critters show up. I will have to invent some more uses that will be unique to this type of short range camera. We have a large parking lot that is situated behind one of out local donut outlets and some of the fellows slip out the back door and throw out some old donut pieces and this brings in the seagulls. I did a early morning setup on this empty parking lot to see if I could capture some pictures and movies of these creatures. The result was me having to fend off a series of people that drove out across the parking lot to steal the cam, even though I was just feet away in my truck watching. This ended that test for now until I devise a way to make this cam a little more theft proof. With another manufacture entering this market we might have room to do some side by side tests once we receive that cam. It is hard for me to believe that someone can improve over the performance of this cam. It is extremely fun to work with and performs flawlessly.

02-27-2008 update:  We have had this cam setup on a neighbors feeder for a while trying to capture a picture of a never seen before in the area bird. Possible some type of oriole. To date we have only manage to document every other bird that has ever hit the south but not that bird. We are entering a cold spell and this might bring in some visitors that we have not seen before. The setup is at 6 feet and even the small yellow finch has managed to trigger the cam. It would be nice for some who has a pond with some Woodies on it to capture some pictures for us to display. This really gives folks a great way to still play with the cameras during the cold weather and is an important time to support the feathered friends that is also a part of the nature us trail camera folks enjoy to look at. We had some critter eating the edge of the ground feeder and a couple of days with this camera on duty allowed us to identify that we have more than tree rats in the area. These little rodents are as in tune with bird seed as the dreaded grackle.

04-02-2008 update:  We still have this cam on the neighbors feeder waiting for the batteries to fail so we can get an idea of just how long we can this cam to operate on a single set of  Energizers. This cam has been out since the 28^th of January and as of yesterday the level still was reading 31 %. This is an active feeder since the blackbirds have hit town. We get around 600 to 1000 pictures a week and there are very few empty pictures. This is fantastic battery life. Once we get the final battery life figure we will report it and then we can assign this cam to looking for some really wild creatures in the swamp.

04-08-2008 update:  The cam ran aprox. Ten weeks on Energizer D cells and took an average of a thousand pictures a week. This was located on a very active feeder and we were able to capture most of the standard wild birds for our area plus during this period we were able to see a couple of yellow winged black birds that should be in California and not in Georgia. We also seen parakeets that had evidently escaped to the wild but were able to survive the Georgia winter. An occasional rodent would manage to climb the pole and get his picture taken stealing seed. The background area behind the feeder also revealed some surprises that we were not aware of, and the visitors were not aware they were getting their picture taken. I now hope we can locate a good area to relocate to give us some more surprises. First I have to break the bubble on a new pack of Energizers for the next 10 week stay.