First trail cameras

Hillbilly Hunter

Hillbilly Hunter

Well-Known Member
Gold Supporter
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
Messages
22,476
Reaction score
4,667
Location
Branchville
I got to thinking about how far trail cameras have came and it really is amazing. My first on somewhere around 2000 had a regular camera that plugged into it and used 110 or 35mm film, i can't remember which. The film would be full and the batteries dead in a couple of days. No telling how many pictures i got developed that were of coons and does. I then upgraded to a camera with a sd card and it used one of the huge 6 volt batteries. I have learned alot since having those old cameras and am still learning. It has brought a whole new dynamic to hunting. Share you first camera experience.
 
I wasn't really ever in to cams until they were digital with SD cards, so not a whole lot has changed for me besides photo & video quality and seeing the advent of black flash. My brother was using them back in the film & white flash days and he got some pretty darn clear shots at night. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world. We'd never have guessed we'd be where we're at today with live action surveillance capability that we can watch on our phones.
 
Ski said:
I wasn't really ever in to cams until they were digital with SD cards, so not a whole lot has changed for me besides photo & video quality and seeing the advent of black flash. My brother was using them back in the film & white flash days and he got some pretty darn clear shots at night. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world. We'd never have guessed we'd be where we're at today with live action surveillance capability that we can watch on our phones.
Click to expand...
The white flash makes much better night pictures IMO but it makes them shy of the camera!
 
Stealth cam 35mm was the first one I had, back around 2000. Then I bought a leaf river digital when they first came out. Moved into homebrew's and built my first with a pixcontroller universal board and Sony p32 camera. Built 4 more with Sony p41's using yeti and pix universal boards. Still have my homebrew's.
 
My boss at the time worked with TrailMaster to produce the first commercially available trail-cameras. They were the TrailMaster 1000 and TrailMaster 1500. The TM1000 was a passive unit like today's cameras. However, they hadn't developed the technology yet of having an array of heat sensors that acted like a motion sensor. So it had just one heat sensor. I can't tell you how many pictures I had developed of the sun coming out from behind the clouds! Basically worthless. However, the TM1500 was amazing. It was an "active" unit, in that it projected an infra-red beam across a trail. It had a sending unit and a receiving unit that had to be lined up. When something broke the beam, the camera took a picture. Lots of research done with those cameras. The problem was, they ran $1,500 each! I only had one!
 
Last edited:
Next cameras were the Non-Typical film cameras. They were massed produced enough that the price had come down. I think I was paying around $400 each for them. I hate to think of how much money I spent on film development, but the local Walmart and Kroger film development departments knew me by name! They would see me coming and get excited to see what deer pictures I had this time.

I still have all those printed pictures. Boxes and boxes and boxes of them...
 
I remember the 35mm days and sitting at Walgreens waiting on the film to be ready 🤣. Don't remember brand. I still remember the first racked buck we got a picture of, even the tree the camera was on. Good times

Heck, do yall remember Trail-timers, where you pull the string out across a deer trail, set the time and when the string was pulled, the time stopped 🤣?

We sure have come a long way
 
I never owned a single camera until 2013 or maybe 2014. I bought a Moultrie m880i at Sportsman's Warehouse. I only hunted public land and I wasn't about to put it someplace like that. I put it in my backyard and the next morning there was a picture of a deer!! That was incredible to me since where I lived I would only catch a glimpse of a deer maybe once every few weeks sneaking across the road. I have half a dozen newer cameras of various makes . That old camera still works great and I still use it.
 
I hate to think of the total number of cameras I've used over the years. It's a lot! I know I have a BIG cardboard box full of old dead cameras.

The Non-Typical film cameras were the BOMB for their day, but homebrew hacked digital cameras were a game-changer. No more limitation of 36 images, no film processing cost, and you have the images instantly that could be reviewed in the field. And the image quality on those were out-of-this-world good.
 
First camera was a 35mm...got film developed from it one time and had several doe pics along with a 2½ year old 8pt and I was absolutely fascinated.....then a week latter I returned for the second film cycle and the camera had been stolen.
I was bummed out and didnt replace it...then after some time along came the digital cameras and I got back in the camera game...really enjoy running cameras but still hadnt purchased any of the cell cams...but I do have two areas I'm considering them....truly amazing how far technology has advanced.
Also...not to go off topic...but the trail camera has probally saved more bucks lives on our property than any other single thing we've ever done....knowing a buck from several images and having an opportunity to study him makes it so much easier to decide in the heat of the moment when a particular buck appears...cameras add so much more to the total experience....great management tool and they extend the season...maybe not by killing them...but "hunting" and studying them....enjoying the process.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top