Community > Trail Cameras
Trail Camera Basics, Tips and More
billythekidrock:
Editing and Resizing Photos
Why edit your tcam photos? Often times you will not see anything in the frame or you will get a very dark photo where you won’t see a thing at first, but by lightening or resizing you can often see things you missed. Other times you may want to print and share your tcam photo and most digital photos can benefit from some tweaks like “Instant Fix”. Use caution when editing or resizing your original photos. Most edits are destructive and they cannot be undone after saving. Always work with copies of your images. Using a true photo program like Photoshop or Paintshop is best, but they often have a harder learning curve and tend to be expensive. A couple of free alternatives are Picasa and Gimp.
Why resize your tcam photos? Some trail cams are capable of taking pictures 8 megapixels or more and while that is great for prints, that is often too large for sharing over the internet. Many web forums and hosting sites have a file size limitation to keep loading times fast and to conserve storage space. Remember, resizing is destructive to the original image so always save as a copy or work from a copy. Resizing is as simple as a couple mouse clicks depending on your photo editing software. In Photoshop it is “Save for Web” and then you choose a compression option.
If you do not have a good photo program you can always try these tips from www.hunting-washington.com members to resize your images.
~In Windows XP: Right click your image and select the “Send To” option, then select “Mail Recipient”. Select your size option and email to yourself.
~In Windows Vista: From the photo gallery click the “Email” button on the top Ribbon and choose your photo size. In the Email dialog box opens, right click on the file name and select open. This will open the resized image. Right click on the image, select copy. You can now paste this to another location as a resized copy.
~In Windows, open up MS Paint. You can change the image size in “Attributes” by selecting “Image” from the Menu.
~Image Resizer powertoy for MS XP allows you to resize any image by right clicking on it. You can save a copy any size and includes commonly used presets.
~Many photo sharing or storage websites, like Photobucket, will resize your photos when you upload them to your account.
billythekidrock:
Organizing your photos
Do you organize and scrutinize your photos to find out exactly what triggered a “blank” photo? Do you make note of the time of every good animal photo to help with patterning?
Right now I bring home the cards and copy the photos to a folder with the date that I checked the camera for a file name. Over the last couple years I have lost track of the where’s & when’s of most of my trail camera images so this year I started a spreadsheet to help keep things in order and easier to look over in the future.
The spreadsheet has columns for:
“Check Date & Time” so I know when I checked it last.
“Camera” for which camera or brand.
“Camera Date & Time” since I often forget to reset the clock.
“Actual Date & Time” to adjust off times and dates.
“Photo” for the photo name with a hyperlink to the photo.
“Animal” for generic titles such as bear, deer, etc.
“Notes” for more detailed descriptions.
It is a work in progress and I may add or subtract columns as time goes on.
The other day I was scrolling through 1,500 photos and only 15 contained animals. The rest were from the grass moving around the camera. But I carefully looked at each and every one in order to make sure that I didn’t miss something. I noticed one 3-shot burst that did not contain much grass and upon further scrutiny, I noticed the leg in left side of the photo.
While it is not really a photo I want to keep, I did note the date and time in the spreadsheet to help me track deer movement through this location.
I also “attach” some photos into my GPS software by linking up the image to a waypoint. This allows me to look over the map and easily pull up photos related to the area. In Garmin’s Topo program you double click on the waypoint icon and select “Browse” at the bottom of the Waypoint Properties box. Find your photo and click OK. Now next time when you open the Waypoint Properties you can click on the yellow arrow “Open Link” and view a picture from that location.
billythekidrock:
Trail Camera related articles and websites
Excellent trail camera article by Tom Ryle.
http://www.pnwbowhunting.com/2010/06/invaluable-trail-camera.html
Discussions, reviews, pictures.
http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/board,37.0.html
Reviews, tests and more.
http://www.trailcampro.com/
Reviews, forum, gallery.
http://www.chasingame.com/
stumprat:
Thanks for posting. I love these tutorials.
ML_Hunter:
Thank you sir!! All helpful tips! I'll be printing this out and studying them closely :chuckle:
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version