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2010
Tasco 5MP 16 count Red Flash Camera Review
This camera is just a handful measuring 5 X 4 X 2 inches. We had this
camera during the summer to do some prerelease work and
found it basically not functional. When it became
available I had it on the list of cameras we would test
this year. The order arrived and we went through the
initial inspection and right off we found that the good
old boys failed to include the proper manual and sent a
manual for a completely different camera. There are some
simple incomplete instructions inside the door in faint
1/32 inch print. Next we attempted install the four AA
cells to begin the programming. This did not go well. We
have seen this exact same problem two times before. The
battery box is more in tune with the Chinese sized AA
cells which are a bit shorter. We were able to install
the batteries but with great effort. The battery box was
warped out of shape at the bottom. After a whole lot of
effort we determined that the camera so far is not
functional and does not work. Not holding the program
when batteries are pulled is another issue. I have
pulled it back down and am going to go through it about
4 AM in the morning with a very good cup of coffee and
some special analyzing tools to see if I can get this
camera to start sensing and taking pictures. These
Superior Optics cameras are all about the same so I may
be able to get it going.
Two long hours of meddling with this camera I finally was able to get it
to work. When I say “work” I mean it does work but not
well and without all the proper documentation and
nothing on the web site I was on my own to figure it
out. This is a little greener than a BTC and a bit
smaller. The finish is non reflective and should be easy
to hide. Latch pins are stable and did not seem to drift
out of place with use. The seal is continuous and well
in place. Inside the door is a small rubber foam block
to hold the batteries in place but due to the tightness
I have to use a tool to get them out. The warped
compartment causes the door to drag a little at the
bottom when opening and closing. I tried to reshape the
battery contact area so this was not a problem. The
front of the cam has a small panoramic (wide angle) PIR
sensor at the top and the lens is just below that, The
IR array and function indicator is at the bottom front.
A small lock loop on the door is the only security. The
back of the camera just has the belt loops for mounting.
There is a USB cable in the box which may indicate that
there might be internal memory. Without the
documentation we do not know this but will probably test
it though this cam does not appear to work if the card
is not installed. It could also be used maybe to view
pictures if there is no card reader on the owners PC.
The only other thing in the package was the strap.
This is a basic camera but it will do video we assume because it appears
on the menu. It is rated at five MP with a low option
which could mean two different resolutions for pictures
and maybe two different video resolutions. This is just
a guess by going by the limited menu and the way it is
displayed. The box indicates that the time/date and moon
phase is displayed on the images and the max card size
is 1 gig. It also says that an extra wide strap is
provided to help prevent theft; hmm I wonder how that is
going to work? Video option is pre set to 14 seconds in
length. PIR sensing is supposed to be out to 35 feet. My
testing this morning at 75 degrees was very hard to
trigger at 18 feet but did a little better at ten feet.
Walk tests seem to indicate that it may have a decent
trigger time if the camera will sense. This time of year
with the temperatures being so high the PIR function
becomes weak but at a 20 degree difference between
displayed body heat and a 75 degree background it should
still function fairly well. Two hours on the un official
trigger test bench and the results were zero. I could
not get the camera to trigger even one time. The sensing
seems to be broken. I have about 10 hours invested so
far and very little results. It looks like this unit is
going to have the same end result as the pre production
camera and end up with out a review. I am going to take
this to Anthony for a day but I feel we will close this
review. We had one other fellow on our forum that gave
his a day before returning it due to dissatisfaction.
Before I could make the trip Anthony showed up here with
an arm load of cameras and we took on the task of re
evaluating this camera again. Going back to basics we
took a 512 Scan Disk card and formatted it in the camera
again and went through the program to insure that it was
correct. We did get some results this time and now we
figure that this camera may be partial to certain cards.
As of now we could get it to only work with this one
card. Further test will be done to see if other cards
will work. The 4 other brands I have here would not
work. The format procedure in the menu is also very
questionable and does not always seem to take for some
reason. Anyway it looks like we are again on our way and
may be able to work our way a little way further before
we forced to install it at the 100 yard line on the
rifle range if it quits again. Another couple hours and
we have determined that the rebuild this morning
evidently saved the patient. The cam will now take the 1
gig cards we normally use and appear to have normal
function now. The delay period can be set all the way
down to 5 seconds (not recommended to go below that)
which makes this cam kick Moultrie butt all day. The day
range and 8 plate analysis tells us the color tones are
close to nature and not saturated. They are not too bad
for the price and above average compared to some other
more expensive cams tested this year. Back to what we
felt would be another hair pulling cam cussing trigger
analysis and we are still cussing a little and we have
to go back once we find out why this camera is giving us
the results we are seeing. There appears to be a reverse
in day/night times. The day trigger seems to be as much
as a second more than the night with flash times which
is normally the other way around but not by that amount
of time.
Going back over all the notes and findings so far and I see a pattern of
short periods of function followed by long periods of
non function. We discussed this and were trying to
figure why the formatting in the camera would work but
not consistently. Then all of a sudden the camera worked
with most all the 1 gigs we had. Further examination and
the fact that it all of a sudden began to appear to have
normal function led us to another area. This is the SD
card slot, which was very stiff and hard to take the
card when it came out of the box. We have had this
happen before and function at first is intermittent and
then greatly improved with use. This would also explain
the difficulties during programming because the camera
must see the SD card in order to begin function and
programming. Further tests show that this camera does
act like it has some type of light metering going on. If
this is not aligned (in the firmware) correctly it tends
to throw trigger times off when put under certain
conditions, much like what we had happen with one of the
top of the line cameras this last month. We are setting
up now to see if there is a way around the previous
trigger results.
We had to pull out our special light metering system to
get this cam to settle down. During regular lighting
when the cameras light metering does not have to work
the camera will have a trigger time of 1.6 seconds. If
the light conditions force the metering to work conditions then the trigger times can be
stretched over two seconds. We were able to provide
those conditions and record repeatable tests of this
fact. This is a firm ware bug and will eventually have
to be addressed. Tasco should not feel bad because the
Reconyx did the same but not out past the one second
mark. We will just have to say that most of the time
this camera will have under two second trigger time.
07-11-2010 update: Flash range was somewhat weak for the 16
emitters but some detail could be seen in the center at
40+ feet. The sensing was 55 feet at a little over 80
degrees. The eight plate had pretty good detail at a
200% zoom so that says that photo editing would work if
more detail was needed at a greater distance. The
performance of this cam started off pretty rocky but now
that the card slot has settled down we are starting to
see a degree of steady performance that in areas is weak
but still somewhat functional. We do like the delay time
feature on this priced camera.
07-12-2010 update:
About dark we ran out of steam so we just stuck this cam
on a stand with the hopes of getting our first examples
of actual field pictures. We pulled the card at noon
today and we did manage to capture a few. First off we
see that this camera wants to stay in the day mode and
not switch to night. We had a number of pictures that
were color but black with some detail of the animal. The
ones from the filtered sunlight through the canopy were
somewhat fuzzy but readable. Color tones were not over
blown. The night flash seems to do a fair job out around
25 feet as long as the animal was pretty well centered.
The description we have heard in the past was “tunnel
flash” where the array fails to spread the light and
just shoots right down the center. We are coming closer
to what I had earlier stated. This camera does work but
just not very well in some areas except delay which
seems to work just fine.
07-13-2010 update:
After a hard fought battle to get this far we are going
to pull this camera and end the review. There are some
nice things we liked about this camera but the negatives
so far with the black pictures and other marginal
functions are just too much to keep on burning hours on
a camera that has this amount of problems.
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Trigger Times
without flash
(due to pir configuration camera
was tested upsidedown)
Note: Light metering is pushing the times over 2
seconds
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Trigger Times
with Flash
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Flash Range
Tests
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