My Wildlife Cameras

A few times i have been asked about my wildlife camera so thought id do a little blog about them.


Having been fascinated with nature from an early age i always wanted to learn about, watch, record and capture wildlife and the natural world. For a long time ive enjoyed photography and in the pre digital age all of my pictures were taken on slide.

 Old slide photo. Grey Seal at Blakeney point

Things have changed rather alot since then and im now all digital, hopfully some day i might get round to digitizing all my slides. Although i do feel some of the preciousness of an image has been lost with the digital conversion.

The Wildlife Cameras.

I started my remote camera wildlife recording in about 2004 when i got some wireless cctv cameras, the only medium available for me to record to then was VHS tapes and i managed to capture some very grainy images of the local Rabbits. Technology at a reasonable price wasn't really about then so i just continued with my photography.

 Less than a year ago i joined Twitter and was inspired by Mike Legh Mallory's Badger cam on Wildlifewhisperer TV and  Wildlifekate cam's so looked again into setting up one of my own cameras.

My first £20 320tvl cam

Looking around at different cameras and set ups and having to work to a very tight budget of as cheap as humanly possible, i settled on a £20 320TVL day/night cctv camera off e-bay and got 30m of  Power/Video cable to go with it, that was the easy bit.

The first problem was how to get the camera signal into the computer, for this i got a Compro usb input from Wildlifewhisperer and used a BNC to RCA adaptor to connect the cam to the computer input.

The next problem now i could get the signal into the computer was how to record, recording all night wasn't feasible so a bit of internet searching and i found a great piece of software, i-Spy is freeware and offers full motion detection and sensitivity to your preferences.


Components.

Compro VideoMate C200 Plus

BNC to RCA adaptor

Video and Power Cable

i-Spy

My first night and i captured a Fox.

 I was so excited to get this however looking back its not a very good image. The camera was only 30m away and a nice Badger run was quite close so i got another 50m of cable and moved the camera. During daylight the camera worked fine but as the IR faded in nothing. I figured out this was due to voltage drop along the length of the cable. My solution was thanks to a skip find of some armoured power cable, this was laid down and the power problem was sorted. For a while all was working well, i had a good power source and had fitted an additional IR lamp for extra illumination and got some good footage.

 

Unfortunately the image started to degrade over time and then became totally unviewable. Twitter again helped and Gareth Jones Trailcamwildlife suggested using better video cable, so a reel of RG59 was purchased.

RG59 Cable

 As i had to lay new cable and winter was on its way i decided to move the cam again and put it on a lane near the house. Lane cam at the moment is a 540tvl IR cctv camera, the same as the earlier cam but slightly better resolution and with the same additional IR light to the side. With the cam in its new location and closer to the wildlife i had problems with the IR (burn out) where the infra red light is to bright, again Gareth Jones Trailcamwildlife suggested a great solution of diffusing the light using milk carton plastic and this works really well. Since then ive captured some great footage of the local wildlife.

540tvl cam with milk carton diffuser
                                                                               

         

A New Cam

  Inspired by one of Wildlifekate cam's i recently modified my old 320tvl cam by changing the focus of the lens and placed it near my bird feeders. The Mice seem to enjoy the new cam.
Lastly three budget bird box cameras were put up at the beginning of the year at the moment nothing has shown any interest, apart from the one box without a camera.