We are going to be reviewing both the D-8 and the IR-8X cameras at the same time in different reviews. We want all to know that this brand name is all together different than what was seen in the two previous years. The distributor has upgraded to another manufacture and from what we have seen at this point was a very good decision. This being by far not a mini camera, (like MOULTRIE M-999I MINI GAME CAMERA ) it is a tall 11 inches and 7.5 inches wide. It will stick out off the tree almost 4 inches. There are no strap slots on the back and no strap in the package. There is just a small bungee hole at each corner to hang the camera. The bungee straps are not included in the package, but were supposed to be included. The outside finish is a satin black and has somewhat of a face look with the relation of the PIR sensor and lens on each side and the array in the middle. This is a little like two eyes and a nose. The camera has a full door with the camera in the back (my choice of design) and not in the door to knock off aim when mounted. There is a small loop for a little lock for the door is the only security. The external battery port is in the back bottom which would work well with their battery pack because it incorporates an elbow plug that will still fit in that space. A strait in plug would hold the back of the cam off the tree if used. The use of optical quality glass on the camera lens is a nice touch. There is a full weather seal around the door but they still use the pain in the butt flopping latches that want to swing into the crack when you want to close the door. The latches seem to close it up good and tight when you can arrange for them to be out of the way when closing the door. The camera is heavy so it will take a good bungee to hole it secure or one of those small ratchet straps around the whole camera and tree.
We were not so impressed with the documentation because of no specification table inside. For example this camera has three resolutions that are listed as being low, medium, and high. Being the high is 8 MP we assume that the other two settings would be maybe 3.1 and 5 MP. WE could not find this information in the booklet or on the package. When IR flash is selected you get a 26 count IR array to do the illumination. When you select the white flash you get a high output strobe for the illumination. The flash is rated out to 40 feet. The sensor is rated out to 60 feet. You can use up to 8 gig SD cards and there is an internal memory of 64 MB. Power to the camera is four D cells or an external six volt supply. This set of 4 D cells should give about 30 days of operating time when set to default. Open up the door and you will see the lenses, array and just below is the status lamps. There is a nice large LCD for programming and viewing your pictures. Below is the programming buttons and power/delete and reset buttons. SD card slot (up to 8 gig) is at the bottom and the USB tort is next to it.
Programming was very simple once you get the hang of it. They have a different style than we saw last year. They use the typical up/down/left/right with select buttons. Just toggle through and hit the right button on settings and image to enter the majority of selectable areas in the programming.
We see very little as far as security, so you will have to depend on after market items or order from their web site which has several options for their camera line. I am going to capture a few pictures and then get into some un official testing of trigger and such prior to getting it out for all the in depth inspections. I did a quick test outside which showed very natural color with sharp and clear pictures having good contrast. We just might have a couple of winners with these two top selections from WGI.
7-26-2010 update: Trigger times finally got done and the with flash came out at about a little longer than two and a half seconds but the night with flash were in the one and three quarters seconds time frame. Both strobe and IR flash reached out to the 50 foot marker. Sensing was 35 feet but the temperature was very high and that is not conclusive.
07-31-2010 update: We have developed some mock scrape areas to aid us in having more areas to capture sample pictures because of the load of cameras we are presently working on. This camera has very good day color pictures and fair IR night time pictures. The problems that we seen both in the day and night pictures is there was more motion blur than we like. For the time spent verses the amount of pictures this camera did a good job. Function was great but the motion blur makes animal that was moving very fuzzy.
09-19-2010 update: We just pulled the card and we had 939 more white flash pictures and this camera is still going. It has a new empty card and will remain out now until the batteries fail.
10-27-2010 update: We are into the season so our picture count is way down thus we will see the battery life of this camera go on for a longer time. It is just hanging in there and giving us very good service.
12-05-2010 update: This camera was still going today when we changed the card but the little snap feature that holds the SD card in fails to catch the card any more so even though we still have power we cannot use the cam anymore do to this failure. The camera had over 2500 white flash photos at the time the SD card slot failed and the battery levels were around 50%.
