Most homebrew enthusiasts still use the older and popular cameras, but in my opinion these cameras are obsolete. Because these older cameras are still popular, they can be expensive and hard to get. The Sony P41 is a 4.1 mega pixel camera that is at least 4 years old. These still sell for $120 to $150. I can buy a W200 for that and it is 4 times the camera.
I like high quality high resolution pictures, and my cameras took more than 40,000 of those pictures in 2008. i think these pictures show why I love these cameras.
In November, I had a W200 set-up over a deer carcass. After a week and several thousand pictures of magpies and golden eagles, I decided to move the camera. I took my W90 and set it up in place of the 200 because I wanted to see what happened at the carcass just in case.. My W90 is the only camera that I have now that is not a W200. A year ago,it was my favorite camera before the 200's got cheap enough to buy. I keep the 90 because I get calls from time to time from neighbors that want me to come set up a camera for one reason or another. I don't want to use my better cameras to show someone that it was their dog that got into the chicken coop and killed their chickens. Since last March, I have used the 90 more as a pocket carry around camera. I dropped it on concrete and put a dent in it, and it has been dropped in the snow twice, but surprisingly it still works. But sometimes when the temp drops below 30 degrees the shutter doors freeze up and will not open and close properly.
On Saturday night November 22, my dog and i went to check the W90 at the carcass set. When I walked up to the set, I shined my flashlight on the carcass. I saw that both rib cages were gone, bones and all. I knew before I opened the camera that I had cougar pictures.
When I got home that night, I looked through over 200 cougar pictures. Then the first daylight picture from the next morning showed that the shutter doors had frozen partially closed. I could see a magpie on the carcass, and I thought, no big deal. I was just happy it did not happen the night before when the cougar was at the carcass.
Then after a few magpie pictures, this picture appeared and I was sick. A daylight cougar picture and my shutter doors were frozen.
I think most have seen the cropped version of this picture
Because of the resolution, I was able to crop and salvage five of about 50 pictures of this cat taken that morning. If one of my 200's had been there I would have 1.5 times the resolution, and that camera would not have frozen up.
The cropped version. Try this with a low-rez camera.
This picture is a good example of what you can do with the hi-rez pics. This was taken by a W200
The cropped version is an interesting picture for a trail camera
This shows an ugly picture made interesting by cropping.
