Hi All,
I am currently working on a project in the Rhodoppe region (Between Bulgaria and Greece, where there remains exceedingly rare remnants of European Old Growth) that involves deploying approximately 50 camera traps alongside a ranger program to capture media to drive local awareness of biodiversity and wildlife in Greece.
The goal of the project is to capture high-quality footage of wildlife in this region for use in a media display that will be projected across Athens and Thessaloniki.
I am looking for guidance/recommendation for camera traps that will be at a reasonable price point, while also providing high-quality footage that will be engaging for the community. The purpose here is not a study or population identification - but simply, to show Greeks the inherent value of this ecosystem.
Does this community have any recommendations for cameras that will deliver excellent image quality for this purpose at a reasonable price point?
Thanks!
28 February 2025 10:15am
Probably 8MP HIKvision cameras (colorvu, turret, hybrid are my choice) would provide superb image quality. But comes with a power cost. They could be recorded on Pi’s with nvme drives that ai could assemble. The power usage would likely be a continuous 13-15W though. They could do AI triggering of wildlife.
I could also add thermal images which make for impactful images as well. I’d just using thermal images and doing continuous recording with post processing to find the animals you could drop lower than 10W.
Additionally I could add extremely high quality audio recording (like nature recording people use) on the same platform so that ultimately your video recordings could have both high quality video together with high quality audio for really impactful videos
Please reach out if this interests you.
Akiba
Freaklabs
1 March 2025 9:17am
Hi Oren.
Since we interface our devices to many different camera traps, we've had the chance to observe the image quality (as well as the innards) of a variety of them. I would say that at the moment, we interface our devices to Browning camera traps compared to others by a wide margin. this was only in the last few years as Reconyx and Bushnell also used to be more popular. For image quality, I would recommend Browning Spec Ops and Recon Force. If you're on X or Instragram, I recommend checking out the videos from @cameratrapsue . She mainly uses Browning and they are a good example of the image quality.
As an aside, we have no connection to Browning and do not receive anything from them. We're just trying to help :)
Akiba
Kim Hendrikse