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2011 Minox DTC 500 8 MP 32 count red flash
digital camera review
This past year we had the pleasure of reviewing a new entry to the trail
camera market that was being produced by one of
our well known rifle scope companies. This trend
is now continuing with the introduction of these
cameras from yet another company that has given
us hunting optics and scopes. The chatter has
gone on some of the outdoor forums and we have
collected a library of those comments in case we
ever had the opportunity to do a review, we
would have those notes for a comparison to our
findings. This assists us to make sure should we
find a problem that it is across the board
instead of just an issue with our single test
unit.
First off is the suggested retail price is $399.00 and we found that
some vendors have reduced that figure to
$349.00. We have the ability to run a comparison
of features verses the price and on an average
the competition with similar advertized features
are in the two hundred dollar range. This German
based company has been renowned for quality. So
in order to keep up with their market standards
we are hoping to see exceptional function to
match the price they are asking. One indicator
so far is their implied warranty period of 2
years. We are not too sure exactly the
difference of implied verses limited style
of warranty but as the field reports start to
arrive we will know just how their customer
service stacks up against the competition. So
far we have not found in the documentation a US
address or phone number for customer service.
Our only contact has been by internet.
Their choice of color for the case is a clean OD green color. The case
size is six inches tall and four and a half
inches wide. It sticks out off the tree about
two and a half inches. The front view is a
sculptured look with the array at the top front.
Centered on the front is the main lens and below
is the wrap around multi zone PIR sensor. The
layout is a cam in the door type with the
battery compartment in the back half. This is
closed up with a Predator cam style of slide
latch that closes the full weather gasket
wrapped door. On the back is some small bark
grabbers and the standard strap loops with the
added touch of Python loops at the top. Over all
the camera takes on a solid feel. The first
thing that I found that was somewhat annoying
was when un latched and the door opened, a
portion of the batteries fell out. There is a 6
volt external battery port on the bottom of the
camera.
Inside on the camera side there is a view/programming screen at the top
front with its associated control button pad
just below. The SD card (up to 16 gig) slot is
on the door edge with the card going in label
towards the front of the camera. This brings the
second small issue. There is room for the card
to slip under the card slot to the inside of the
camera if you get it a little bit of an angle
when inserting, so to avoid this insure you are
inserting the card in straight into the slot.
I normally take a good long time and go through the documentation and
absorb all the individual quirks related to a
new camera. In this case I spent an eternity
with the book and camera in my lap and all the
strong caffeine I could handle. The programming
of the camera is very easy and straight forward
as long as you just deal with the camera. When
you mix the instructions from the manual with
the camera there seems to be a major problem.
The documentation has instructions on features
that just do not appear on the camera like the
time lapse feature. We assume that we may have
received the wrong book even though the DTC 500
appeared on both the camera and book. Some of
the terminology used to describe features are
also somewhat different like shutter lag time
which we assume means trigger time. The term
continuous shooting may also be referring to
burst mode. The specification chart did not have
the delay mentioned which the programming has a
minimum of 5 seconds which is great. Video is
640X400 and there are four picture settings of
8, 5.1, 3, and 1.3 MPs.
With the book stuck back in the box we are continuing forward without
it. The advertized shutter lag time (trigger)
is under 1 second. I could not get that on my
initial tests but may be verified once on the
official lab table. The first day and night
pictures take were good, but so far have not
been what I would call exceptional. This may
change once deployed on the hill with our
resident corn eaters and day/flash range/8 plate
tests. The delay also seemed to be longer than
the 5 second setting. Sensing during the initial
tests seemed to be very good. Up to this point I
am going to have to say that the suggested price
and the function are not running parallel. The
dead pixel test was clean and the clunk tests
were negative. Drop and leak tests did well
without incident though there is some loose
battery noise during the drop test.
We are headed to the lab next and get all the
official data then off to the hill.
12-17-2011 update:
The back and fourth going over and over to
ensure that this data is correct because of the
difference in the reported specifications and
our actual findings in the lab. As you can see
that my initial thoughts about trigger time was
correct and it came in just under two seconds
and the delay time also got stretched out about
ten seconds on the five second setting. The day
range showed well with a little fuzz on the 200%
8 plate zoom. We will add the flash range
probably tonight if weather cooperates.
12-18-2011 update: We completed the
flash range/8plate test and the flash is good
out to 60 feet. The sensing is around 50 feet
and still inside the flash range. The night with
flash pictures appear to have good black but the
white is a little gray. The overall contrast is
a bit fuzzy but readable out to 50 feet and good
for most applications.
12-25-2011 update:
Here it is the big day for the kids and I am
here trying to get a few details cleaned up.
Every so often we review a camera and there just
does not seem to be anyone that deemed to take
any interest. We managed to get some high
resolution stills and a little bit of video. The
stills are pretty good but still have that fuzzy
edge to the detail though the color is great and
the black and white on the IR is great. The
video has a very annoying clicking sound in the
background but seem to be smooth and fluid. My
thought so far is we are not up in function to
match the asking price.
12-31-2011 update:
We were just notified that the selling price of
this camera has been reduced to $ 219.00. This
is getting closer to the competition with like
specifications. I did notice it in a Sportsmans
Guide advertisement this morning but it was
still showing the old price.
01-21/2012 update:
This camera is completing its final operation
for battery life. When this is concluded
we will report the battery life. this
review is closed.
Trigger Tests
without flash (1.71s)
with flash (1.56s)
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