Bushnell Trail Sentry 5.0 is not worth buying
Written: Sep 30 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: I can not see a single positive thing about this camera.
Cons: Camera does not live up to any of its claims, takes bad photos
The Bottom Line: I would not recommend anyone to buy Busnells night vision game camera, stick with the tried and true.
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| craftgun40's Full Review: Bushnell Trail Sentry 5.0 Megapixel Camera with Ni... |
We recently bought the Bushnell Trail Sentry with night vision and after only two days we plan to ship it back tomorrow. It was not a good purchase and I am shocked Cabala's would sell such a crappy camera.
We paid 170 dollars for this camera and thought it would be a lot of fun to catch the nightlife around our home.
It sounded really great..a 5 Megapixel trail camera, motion activated and equipped with infrared for non flash night time pictures.
The item shipped quickly, I think we got it in 3 days and both of us was quite excited about it. The manual is very small with small print and difficult to read...and setting up the camera requires following the directions completely.
It has a security code, which seems a bit silly to me, and it comes with a default settings, but you may put your own code in. The code prevents photos from being taken unless you have entered the code into the little touch pad. However it is easy to make a mistake and three strikes your out and the camera shuts down. You have to switch it off and back on again and start all over again.
We bought the night time version and you have to set the clock to what time you want it to consider day time and what time you want it to consider after dark and night time. Once you do that, the clock determines the shooting mode and will add fill in flash to day time photos, but will turn the flash off and open up the infrared sensors for night time flash-less photos.
The day time photos were fair... though it didn't seem to take many pics,..even though they were staged and of us walking around, it seemed that it ignored us a lot of times.
The color was low to fair, and it seemed to shoot distance shots OK, just not sharp and clear like you would expect a 5 mega pixel to do.
At dusk, we had three photos of our dog going in and out of a doggie door taken from the outside..the first pic was almost to dark to see my white dog...the second pic taken only seconds later was bright and good light and didn't look to bad, but the third one taken only seconds later was so dark you couldn't tell there was a white doggie door there let alone a dog.
The bigger problem came from the night time shots..we set it up in a area with a lot of deer activity, we live in a rural area with a lot of deer and wild life. For two nights it did not take a single pic. So tonight we staged some scenarios and the resulst were disappointing to the point of ridiculous.
We set it up and I walked back and forth in front of the camera..I started at 45 feet which the night vision is advertised for up to 45 feet away...nothing. I walked back and forth in all directions, and the little red motion light would flicker on, so the camera knew I was there..but no photos were taken. Back and forth I walked...nothing.
Finally when I got about ten feet away, the infrared kicked in and took several pics..but if I stepped back a foot then I was invisible. I even came right up to the camera and peered into it..and it didn't take a photo.
We removed the 512 memory card (that came with it, it will hold up to a 1gb) and checked the photos..and they were very very bad.
Photos were almost totally dark and though it did take a few pics 15 feet away, they were totally black. The ones were I walked closer to the camera, you can just barely see my outline in a grayish washed out color...and a couple photos from about 5 feet away were almost recognizable, meaning you could almost tell I was in the photo.
I could go on about the features on the camera but I see no need to..it is a piece of junk and not worth the price we paid for it. My son has a much much cheaper camera that is not infrared and it takes super pics and works great. This is going back. And we will go for a plain old fashioned motion actived flash game camera instead.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
craftgun40
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Location: Michigan
Reviews written: 156
Trusted by: 123 members
About Me:
I am retired, extremely active and enjoy my life, family and dog.
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