2011 Hunten Outdoors GCS20-70IR 56 count red flash 7 MP digital camera review
This is the first in a series of the Hunten Outdoor camera $180 offering for 2011. We had been involved in the testing of the little small GS-35 cameras earlier in the year. I picked to start with this camera because of its different case design. This is where the case is mounted to the tree but there is a drop down drawer that has the battery compartment (4 Cs) and the programming screen and control buttons. The SD card and USB ports are also in this same area. The SD card slot (label in 32 gig) is hidden above the programming screen. To access this dropdown door you have to pull forward a plastic tab sticking out the bottom of the camera. This forward action will un latch the drawer and it will drop down exposing the screen/battery area.
Out of the box this is a very impressive looking camera. It has to be the very best color combination (moss like) of any I have seen on a camera. It hides very well with most all foliage. There is some assembly needed to install the bark biter/belt loop assembly to the back of the camera. This was easy and all that was needed was a Phillips driver to install 4 screws. This is a fixed 7 MP still camera that has a 4 burst and a single video 20 second 640X480 resolution. The trigger is advertized at 1 second. I took some sample tests in side the lab and the sensing was very good and looked very much like trigger time was very near 1 second. The outside pictures were a bit fuzzy but the color representation was very good.
That latch thing sticking out the bottom sure made handling it for tests very difficult. There is no gasket on the drawer but it does fit up inside so it would be difficult to get wet when properly hung on the tree. Where things fall apart is the ants can walk in and set up camp. There is an area around the latch where the gap is over 1/16 inch which is an invitation to a fire ant to walk in and build a nest. I took a pipe cleaner and laid it across that area and closed the drawer and that seemed to fill the gap just fine.
Documentation and programming seemed to be a good match. Being that this is a single resolution camera the programming was easy. This is very much like the same system as the WGI cameras have.
Security is not part of the design though there is a cable slot on the back; it is mostly plastic and would probably break fairly easy. A double wrap with a crossover knot might work if you cross over the front of the camera and then cross the cable near the feed through loop.
My short time with this camera so far has made a believer out of me on this camouflage job they have selected. It is really at home on one of my oak trees and even with the array having a odd shape it hides very well. I will say very good job Hunten for this color selection.
Better get this off to the other half for some serious and final formal testing.
While I was waiting for that I noticed a statement in the user manual. This camera ( like MOULTRIE A-20I MINI GAME CAMERA ) has a patent pending intelligent PIR sensor that detects animal movement all times of the year without false triggers. I had noticed how well it was sensing and I mentioned that above. I had just ran similar tests on the WGI N6 and found I had to work to get a trigger. I went ahead and set up several other cameras (one being a Moultrie 80) along with this one and did a little walk test and sure enough this camera out sensed all of them. I have yet to see how wide the sensing zone is but I hope that is not like that cudde/leupold mayhem and having a two foot wide sensing area. I will be testing that very shortly. The sensing zone appears to be as wide 12 feet at a distance of 15 feet, as near as I can tell without setting up a formal test. This tells me that my concern about the pencil type zone is not the case.
09-11-2011 update: This camera had a bit slower trigger time than its two little brothers and came in around 2 seconds. The day range was fuzzy and the night range with flash reached out past 50 feet.
09-18-2011 update: This camera seems to be producing some pretty good pictures both day and night. The sensing is way out there but we are not having some weather in the 50s and 60s. We did not get any white out pictures but there were a few that were dark at transition time. So far this camera has performed well. We are not setup in the video mode and will report on that soon. Please view the sample pictures below.
10-01-2011 update: Please view the sample videos we managed to capture. This process went through without any issues and the results were very favorable. More people are starting to see and use the video mode more and more so the camera companies have managed to get a pretty good handle on this process.
11-19-2011 update: Battery life lasted 67 days and this camera took 1666 pictures and 127 videos. Overall performance has been very good.
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