Short history of the trail-camera

BSK

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In a private conversation, Andy S. asked me about the earliest trail-cameras. I responded giving a brief history of trail-cameras that I remember (as I was somewhat involved). Andy S. thought the conversation should be shared with everyone. I've added a few new details as well:

My mentor, Dr. Grant Woods, worked with an engineer and made one of the first trail-cameras for his Masters work in the late 1980s. It used a hacked Kodak disc camera, the one that had the negatives on a cardboard disk, like the old child's toy, the ViewMaster. With that system, he was one of the first researchers to study scrape behavior with a motion-sensitive camera. After that, Grant worked with the developer of what became the first commercially available trail-camera system, Trail Master. The first available unit an "active" unit that required a sending unit, which produced a beam of light, and a receiving unit with a photo-electric eye that monitored the incoming beam of light. If the light stream was interrupted for a predetermined length of time, the receiving unit recorded an event. The receiving unit could be equipped with a camera that would trigger whenever an event was recorded. I believe these units hit the market in the early 1990s. But wow were they expensive! The basic sending and receiving units (TM1500) were around $600, and if equipped with a camera, $1,200. At today's prices, that's $1,200 and $2,400 respectively! But I actually had one of the basic units. Still have it. Next, Trail Master came out with the "passive" unit that became the blueprint for all future trail-cameras (TM500). It had a camera hooked to an infra-red sensor. The problem was, it was only a single sensor, so the camera would trigger whenever there was a sudden increase in infra-red radiation, which means it would trigger whenever the sun came out from behind the clouds! Those units were so frustrating. An entire roll of 36 exposures that were nothing but the sun coming out on a partly cloudy day.

The big change came with the development by two famous wildlife biologists (Jacobsen and Kroll) and their engineers of the NonTypical TrophyCam camera systems around 1998. Those are the ones that took the hunting world by storm. They had figured out that the units needed two infra-red sensors side by side, and the unit would only trigger if the sensors trigger at slightly different times, meaning the source of the warmth was moving right to left or left to right. Those units still used the film cameras, and are the ones most people started with. Eventually, NonTypical was sold and became Cuddeback. Although I'm not a fan of Cuddeback, they did do the hunting world a huge favor by being the first company to produce a trail-camera with an integral digital camera, not an attached hacked camera.

The second huge jump in camera technology came about once the Chinese companies and engineers got involved. Many, MANY of today's camera systems are rebranded versions of these early units, with Covert being one of the originals. To keep from getting sued, I won't go into detail about the industrial espionage that took place in China in those early days, but suffice to say intellectual property theft is such an accepted practice in China that engineers working for one camera company often just walked away with the camera plans and overnight started new companies selling the camera under a different name. However, this system did produce quite a bit of innovation, as each engineer starting his own company added new or upgraded features to the original stolen technology. This bizarre form of competition did produce some truly great cameras. To this day, I'm still using cameras from an upstart company called Uway. Their black-flash cameras truly lead the technology curve.

However, trail-cameras really hit their peak in innovation and quality once big name companies with a lot of money to invest got involved, such as Bushnell and Browning.
 

gtk

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I believe the main reason Trailcameras are "affordable" now, is because of the "homebrew" community, which I believe, started (or blossomed) right here on TNDEER.

When the "average joe" could go to walmart and buy a cheap sony camera, cheap motion sensor, and wire all this stuff together to make a well functioning camera, the trail-camera market had to drop their prices.

it is cheaper for me to go buy a trail-camera now, than to take the time to "homebrew" my own
 

BSK

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When the "average joe" could go to walmart and buy a cheap sony camera, cheap motion sensor, and wire all this stuff together to make a well functioning camera, the trail-camera market had to drop their prices.
That an the incredible amount of competition going on within the Chinese manufacturing market. Although those Chinese engineers watched the homebrew community closely, as many innovations created by garage engineers became incorporated into some of the commercial cameras.
 

BSK

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To me, two of the major innovations in trail-cameras of late have really increased their value. First is the advancements in trigger technology. I remember when trigger speeds were over a second. This worked fine most of the time, but a deer can move a considerable distance in that time, leading to a lot of pictures of just a deer's butt as it disappeared out of the picture frame. Now companies like Spypoint have cameras with triggers speeds below a 10th of a second. That's truly amazing!

For me, because I need quality pictures for running photo censuses, the second major recent innovation is integral camera systems that have the ability to monitor flash output and adjust flash power on the fly. This is a feature that until recently was found only on expensive pocket digital cameras. In the past, every time a camera triggered at night, the flash flashed at full power. This produced a bunch of washed out pictures of deer that were close to the camera. And although this feature only exists on some of the higher-end trail-cameras, now the reflected light of the flash is monitored and the flash toned down mid-flash if something is close to the camera, virtually eliminating the "white out" night pics.

And actually, let me add a third major innovation, and that is excellent manufacturing quality control. I remember the days all too well of feeling lucky to get a trail-camera that lasted more than two seasons. Now cameras last for years and years.
 

backyardtndeer

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Started with 35mm stealth cam. First digital was a leaf river, then onto Sony homebrew with pix and yeti boards. Built several and still have a couple working.

Mostly use moultrie cams now.
 

JCDEERMAN

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Fascinating stuff. I still remember using Trail-Timers - Wow have we come a long way. I still remember the first buck we ever got on camera and where the picture was taken. It was an old Cuddeback camera and it was the only one we had. We now run 20 cameras and are checking cards on our phones up in treestands.
 

BSK

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Fascinating stuff. I still remember using Trail-Timers - Wow have we come a long way. I still remember the first buck we ever got on camera and where the picture was taken. It was an old Cuddeback camera and it was the only one we had. We now run 20 cameras and are checking cards on our phones up in treestands.
Somewhere in my garage is my box of dead cameras. It's a big box! I think it includes almost every brand available.
 

gtk

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There used to be an entire forum here dedicated to the "homebrew" community. After a LOT of work, it started fracturing off into other forums (jesse's hunting page, hagshouse, and some that i forget) . Its about that time that some individuals started building their own boards for use in the homebrew cams (BG2, snapshot sniper, etc). The first affordable "commercial" cameras that i remember, had the same camera's that we were using (samsung, sony, etc) but they had their own boards, but they could manufacture a lot cheaper thus the cheaper prices.

When we moved out here to CO and i had to clean out my attic, i found a couple of sony film cams and some of those walmart motion sensors, no less than 15 or so completed trail cams (film) , and 4 or 5 digital homebrew trailcams. I kept a few working ones just for nostalgia .
 

BSK

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Boy did I ever have a ton of homebrew digitals for awhile. That was before infra-red technology, when only white-flash was available. Even had a few of the first attempts at homebrew infra-red digitals. But by that time, the bigger manufacturers were producing some pretty good black-flash cams (although they were really expensive - the first being around $600).
 

Kirk

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I have all my old, dead cameras out in the woods as decoy cameras for trespassers and poachers. Oddly enough, none have been stolen yet.

I can honestly say the difference between my first trail cam and the newest trail cam is like throwing a bullet verses shooting one. technology has improved so much. The old film cameras were so limited on pictures and expensive to get prints. Battery life was nothing.

The new digitals hold thousands of pictures in a single set. Batteries last A LOT longer.
 

gtk

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The old film cameras were so limited on pictures and expensive to get prints.
Agree, but i remember being as excited as a kid on christmas, everytime i dropped my film off at sams to be processed .. and often i'd be as disappointed as the kid who got socks, when the lady would hand me 24 pics of a cedar tree swaying in the wind or just "black" pics :D
 

Andy S.

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Agree, but i remember being as excited as a kid on christmas, everytime i dropped my film off at sams to be processed .. and often i'd be as disappointed as the kid who got socks, when the lady would hand me 24 pics of a cedar tree swaying in the wind or just "black" pics :D
Yes indeed. I have developed more rolls of "moving grass and sunrises" than I care to remember. I think about of all the TIME (time = money) I had in those rolls of moving grass. Some of my cameras were deep in the woods on the best trail/crossing I could find. Fun times, and like has already been said, we have come a LOOOOOONG ways. Thankfully. :)
 

Kirk

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Agree, but i remember being as excited as a kid on christmas, everytime i dropped my film off at sams to be processed .. and often i'd be as disappointed as the kid who got socks, when the lady would hand me 24 pics of a cedar tree swaying in the wind or just "black" pics :D
The lady at Kmart's photo lab did so many pictures for me she automatically knew to enlarge the buck pictures to the 5X 7 size. YES........tons of pictures of nothing. I did get a turtle one time I always wondered how it triggered the camera. I will see if I can find the Owl picture I got about 20 years ago.
 

BSK

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The WalMart photo people all knew me by first name. Actually, the guys at the photo lab would all gather around as my rolls were printed to see what I had!
 

gtk

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The WalMart photo people all knew me by first name. Actually, the guys at the photo lab would all gather around as my rolls were printed to see what I had!
My place of choice was Sams Club. I always knew i had a good buck on film when the lady would have a huge smile on her face when i walked up to get the pics. She wasn't a "hunter" but after a while, she enjoyed the pics as much as I did.
 

fairchaser

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I had one of the first cam-tracker cameras which was a 35mm camera in a box and was about $500. The last camera I bought was $59 and did so much more including sound and video. Tech has come a long way. I wish my ability to kill mature bucks had improved at the same rate. Alas, it has not! I think we've all gotten a little lazy, letting cameras scout for us.

The best aspect of game cameras is knowing what's out there. I remember seeing turkeys for the first time and had no idea until we got pics they were even there. That started my turkey hunting career.

Camera's have certainly evolved and at the current rate, the surveillance will look something like Hunger Games in a few years.
 

JCDEERMAN

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I remember also having one of those huge boxes where you put a video camera in there and it recorded video. The name is evasive to me at the moment. Seems like it was Drury pushing that product?? It was like 12"x18"
 

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