In this video we discuss how to get better night time images out of your trail cameras. A lot of times the only pictures of that illusive buck you are after are at night and the quality of those images might be a priority to you. If that is true, check out these tips to make your night time photos the best they can be.
The first topic to discuss is the type of flash unit in the camera. The three flash types we will discuss are White Flash, Infared Flash or Red Glow, and Black Flash or No Glow.
WHITE FLASH White flash cameras help take awe-inspiring colorful night pictures and have a long flash range. However, the vibrant white flash can be invasive to wildlife and wary bucks. Also, trespassers will see the white flash and might inspect the camera after triggering it.
INFRARED Infrared or red glow cameras are a step up from white flash in the sense of human and wildlife visibility, but the night time pictures will not be color. If your purpose of the trail camera is for scouting deer, infrared is much less invasive than the white flash. Infrared flash modules typically have the longest flash range in comparison to white flash and black flash cameras. However, infrared cameras are still visible and have a faint red glow when taking a picture at night.
BLACK FLASH/NO GLOW If you're chasing wary old bucks and a serious whitetail hunter, black flash cameras should be your camera of choice. Black flash/no glow cameras are completely invisible to human eye and wildlife. Therefore, your camera can double as a security camera and scouting tool, all while going undetected at night.
The next item to discuss is the physical image sensor in the camera and the mega pixel size. The larger the pixel size on the image sensor, the more light is collected creating a better night time image. Just keep in mind the interpolation process and the marketing gimmicks on the market.
Now, we can talk about settings inside that camera that you can control. The first being the flash range settings. In the lift II and the exodus render, you can adjust the flash range from low, medium, and high. The higher the flash range, the better the night time images will be.
The second setting you can control to improve night time photos is the burst count. The reason for running a burst count is to combat motion blur. If you set your cameras up on a 2 or three shot burst, that flash will be omitted during that entire sequence rather than for a single photo. Try this to significantly improve your night time photo quality.
The final thing to mention, and possibly the most important to you as a consumer, is the actual camera location. Think back to your camera sets on a field edge. The night time photos are typically pretty poor in those types of locations. This is because there is nothing for the light of the flash to reflect off of. When the camera is triggered and the flash is omitted, what is in the detection area will have a huge impact on the quality of the photos. Every material has some sort of light absorption qualities. Whether there's a tree, grass, or there's nothing to bounce that light back off of will determine how pristine the photos are. If running cameras on a field edge is a priority to you, try hanging the cameras high and angling them down to bounce that light off of the ground. You can also hang them in an inside corner and use the opposite tree line to reflect the light back to the camera.
With all that being said, we are firm believers that you need to hang your cameras where the deer are. If you have to give up some night time image quality to capture images of your target buck, then so be it. After all, you can only hunt them in the day time anyways.
