I've gotten a lot of use out of the Gardepro T5CF #14 close focus trailcam since I got it two months ago, but it is a specialized camera and I don't see leaving it in the National Forest or on the back fence for months at a time. Today I received the Browning Dark Ops DCL Nano, which will be designated as camera #15. It's going out to the woods tomorrow to replace Browning #11, which will replace Browning #5 on my back fence. Thus ends the regular service of the two Strike Force Pros I purchased in 2017, but I will still use them for scouting new locations.
Except for the dual sensors, the new camera resembles the two older Brownings more than the larger BTC Patriot #11, which I got in 2022. The color scheme is different (darker), but all the controls are in a familiar locations, and the menu is substantially identical. The built-in screen is the same size as on the older cameras. It is smaller than the one on the Gardepro, but can actually be used for aiming the camera unless the sunlight is too bright. On the back, the two older Brownings say "Made in China," but the two newer ones say "Made in the Phillipines." That's an improvement.
Trail camera makers except Reconyx usually don't tell you the size of the sensors they use, but the manual for the new Browning says the daytime sensor has 4,208 x 2,368 effective pixels. If this is to be believed, it's a 10mp sensor. (The separate night sensor is 1,920 x 1,080, 2mp.) The manual says the Medium picture size is 10mp, which disagrees with the menu setting that says it is 8mp. Hopefully they were just too lazy to redo the menu and the images will be true 10mp. I just checked the manual for #11, which also is dual sensor, and it has exactly the same sensor specs, 10mp/2mp. The newer camera has a higher video resolution than #11, 4K vs. 1080p, but I rarely shoot video. I've decided the initial setting out the woods will be 4K video (23 frames per second), and I will extract frames for stills. It seems that the camera includes one JPG for each video, but it is only 1,920 x 1,080. I just did a test in Photoshop comparing an extracted frame to a still, and the quality seems the same. My biggest concern is that the memory card will fill up quickly and I can't leave the camera out there for six months unattended. Based on file size of my test videos, I estimate the 32Gb that came with it card will hold more than a thousand 10-second videos. If 10 seconds seems short, there is a feature where the video clip is extended up to two minutes if there is movement. We'll see how well that works. (It will take SDXC cards up to 512Gb, and after I brought #11 home, I noticed it had a 128Gb card in it. I will make that swap next time I am out there.)
Since #15 is going into the woods, it may be a while before I get some sample images to post. I hung it on the back fence overnight and did not get any deer, so did a walk test. I am not going to post images of myself, but I would describe the image quality of the stills as better than I've ever seen from a trailcam, including #11 which supposedly has the same specs. The 4K video is in a completely different league than anything I've had before.
Here is the new camera on the right, with Melted Browning #6, which I once had to pluck out of the ashes of a forest fire. #5 and #6 had distinguished careers considering the limitations of their image quality. The second image is the highlight of #5's career, a moose in the woods near Luther, MT in the winter of 2017-18. The final image is one of the better ones from #6's history. I decided to put #5 on the back side of the same tree as #15, at least for a while, but #6 is retired at least for now.
Breaking news: The Gardepro is officially "broken in." The portion of the latch that would allow me to attach a padlock has broken off. Since I don't lock cameras that are just in my yard, it doesn't matter. (The Brownings don't even have a way to attach a padlock to protect the CF card, just a loop for a cable lock to protect the camera.) If probably happened when the wind toppled it a week ago, but I just noticed.
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