Thread: Trail camera not capturing image a night

I'm having a bad run with electronics at the moment! Setup trail cam for pigs. At night, the images are just black apart from one which has two pairs of eyes staring straight at the camera. Can't tell if it's a pig or a possum doing an impressive photo bomb! Daytime photos are fine. Pretty sure the IR lights aren't firing. Had new batteries. It's a Campark T20 if that makes any difference. Any thoughts?

what mode is it in?

Photo+video, both photo and video are affected.

I have a cheapie camera I bought of the 1-day website. It freezes if it tries to video at night so I just use the photo function.

To test if infrared LED (Flash) is firing at night set up on the dark and use a cell phone camera looking at the LEDS - you should see a glow (cant see with naked eye if black flash out of spectrum of human eye) if not the fault could be that.
2nd if you look into the camera port you may see a slightly pinkish looking lenses, this is a day light color filter to give color to images etc... at night this IR filter should move out the way to allow the camera to pick up Infrared better. Sometimes these are mechanical moved other times cameras may not have one. This too can be faulty as its a moving part and requires signal to a electro magnet to move it. Check that this is operational. (pink covered in day and gone at night)
The way it knows to choose an IR or day photo is determined by a light sensor on the front of the camera. The camera looks for amount of light and if too low will stitch to the infrared (black and white) pictures and fire the Night LEDs. So be careful at night when using a torch or light source to test as you could fool it into thinking its day ha ha.

Forgot to say if the IR filter lense is the issue you can remove but day pictures will lack color and look more grey. easy fix for those who do not know how to repair electronics.

Try running it as just photo I have a Moultrie that won't do video at night.
Another way to test it is to look at it with a nv scope or spotter. When the flash triggers you will do see it allright.

OK, thanks everyone for your help. Photo only mode seemed to do the trick and "1 photo in series" was more reliable than multiple photos in series. I can see the LED flash coming on with my naked eye. Effective range is about an arms length, beyond that it's back to black nothingness. Is that normal for cheapo cameras?

I think my cheapo's quote 20m range (or was it 20 feet...).
I'll check if I can find the boxes.

Originally Posted by MB

OK, thanks everyone for your help. Photo only mode seemed to do the trick and "1 photo in series" was more reliable than multiple photos in series. I can see the LED flash coming on with my naked eye. Effective range is about an arms length, beyond that it's back to black nothingness. Is that normal for cheapo cameras?

My suspicion are the ir filter lens is stuck down (day mode) if ir leds flashing then it should at least make 5 meters

Originally Posted by Sika stag

My suspicion are the ir filter lens is stuck down (day mode) if ir leds flashing then it should at least make 5 meters

No obvious filter over the lens and the day time colours are a normal hue.

when mine takes a photo at night it looks like a lit cigarette glow

mine is a mountre (fair few years old now)

it will take photos at night up at least 15m away and get bleached out photos but clear enough for a licence plate if closer than like 10m

I'm going to take a screwdriver to it. Historically, this hasn't ended well for me, but not much to lose.

My theory on why mine freezes when trying to do video at night is that it is too much drain on the batteries, having to run the IR lights constantly for several seconds rather than just a flash.

Originally Posted by Cigar

My theory on why mine freezes when trying to do video at night is that it is too much drain on the batteries, having to run the IR lights constantly for several seconds rather than just a flash.

I think you're right. Video is a bit much for some of the cheap cameras at night.