Want to photograph or film the wildlife in your local area? Join me as I test out a cheap Victure camera trap / trail camera from Amazon to film some of the wildlife in my local woodlands and garden. Camera trapping is not only great fun, but also allows you to still photograph wildlife on location whilst you sleep!
Full video can be found below:
Or, if you would prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video:
In this video I'm going to be testing out this cheap Victure camera trap that I bought off Amazon to see what I can capture in my garden and local woodland. Hello, I'm Roxy, and welcome back to my YouTube channel. I'm a zoologist and wildlife photographer who uses social media to raise awareness about animal and climate activism and things that we can all do to get involved with conservation of the natural world. Okay, so this is actually my first ever camera trap, so I had a lot to learn very quickly to be able to use it efficiently and to capture cool content in and around my local area. So, to make it a bit easier for any of you who might be new to camera trapping as well, I thought I'd share with you some tips and tricks to make the most out of your camera trap. This camera trap here, as you can see in this nice close-up, is a cheap Victure one that I got off Amazon. But a few things to note, because there are some other costs that come with a camera trap as well: you need an SD card to put in them and 8 double-a batteries as well. They take a lot of batteries, so I'd highly recommend getting some reusable ones to pop in there with them.
One thing to note, which is super important, is to test your camera trap inside your house before putting it outside, missing a behaviour because you didn't have the settings quite right. This is really important because for the first few nights I had this up on the robin's nest all I was getting was photographs, even though I thought I was setting it to film! So yeah, play around with it inside, make sure you've got it working, and that you know the ins and outs of how to use it before taking it outside trying to get that shot and then potentially missing a behaviour if you haven't got it quite right. Okay, so, first things first is you want to think about where you're setting up your camera trap. Now I'm in my garden at the moment, here you can see to the right of me that's the fence the edge of my garden and I've got this nice big tree here which would make an excellent base for my camera trap to be held on, but this path here is where I see muntjac deer, pheasants, bunny rabbits; they use this path all of the time. So yeah, first tip is to see if there's any signs of animals around you. You don't just want to have your camera up for days and feel like it was a waste and you didn't actually capture anything. Look for signs like droppings, footprints, signs of feeding, anything that might indicate to you that that path is being used by an animal and increasing your chances of actually being able to capture something with a camera trap that you spent all that time setting up out in your garden.
You don't want to angle it too far to the ground because it's going to alter the exposure. I am going to try to angle it slightly closer to the ground because what I'm aiming for in the camera trap isn't tall all at all, so this might be a little high up for them and I don't want to miss them! In setting up my camera trap, I chose the highest possible quality available on my camera trap because even then it's not that amazing. As I said before this is only £45-50 pounds, so it's not going to be the best quality there is, but it's so amazing to be able to see what you have in your garden and local area. If any of you are going to try camera trapping and have a go at setting up your own camera trap, do let me know in the comments below, and I would love to hear what you saw in your own camera traps that you set up in your own garden! Another thing to note when you set up your camera trap is you want to make sure that there's no branches or leaves like this: say this leaf was hanging over the sensor, that's going to blow in the wind, and maybe cause this to go off rather than an animal going past: you want the battery on this to last as long as you possibly can and not have to scroll through hours of footage which isn't actually what you're hoping for. Another thing that's really important, especially if you're trying to capture something like a badger or muntjac deer in your area, which might not be so used to people; make sure you leave your camera trap set up for a good few days before you go back and check it. I know it's very exciting to try and see what you got on there, but they'll know that you've been around, they'll smell your scent in that area, so you're going to get better footage if you leave it there for a few days and leave them to get settled. That's also then enough time to be able to predict trends in their behaviour; if in that 3 days you've got nothing at all on your camera trap you know it's probably in the wrong place and it's worth moving, that but it gives you enough time to kind of get a sense and a feeling for if you've got it in the right place, and for allowing the animals to come and check it out as well. Obviously this setup that I have here is a very basic cheap version of camera trapping. If you're wanting something more professional you can actually turn your DSLR into remote camera trap, you just need to order a sensor, a remote trigger, and some external sources of light if you're wanting to capture things at night, but just be careful if you are shooting at night that you want to keep that light looking as natural as possible, which is really key for any form of filming or photography.
If you are wanting to learn more about wildlife photography, or photography in general, I have a completely free wildlife photography ebook that's available to download! All you have to do is head to the following link, and yeah I'll send you a free wildlife photography ebook - https://mailchi.mp/772a328fbcb0/freephotographyguide