# Trailcam Looooooong battery life!



## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

I last checked my trailcamera Oct 17th, 2017. I finally got down there today to check it, swap cards and install some new batteries. I was shocked when it showed the proper date. I was sure the batteries had died. I thought though maybe the camera was smart enough to know they were getting low and turn off the camera to reserve enough juice to preserve the settings.

Nope! :mrgreen:

I plugged the card into my phone via a OTG reader and was shocked to see the most recent file was from a couple days ago, a video of cow elk of course.

Holy Moses that is amazing to me, I remember the early days of trailcams when they would make it a week or to before needing a new set. Cant wait to dig through the thousand or so videos to see if there is anything super neat on there. The few vids I spot checked had loads of cow elk and a few misc smaller bulls.

Pleasantly surprised!

*Edit: mem card was a 32gb, total files came to 29.6GB ... so I really stood a strong chance of filling up the entire video card before the batteries ran out. Interesting


-DallanC


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## Don K (Mar 27, 2016)

What kind of trail cam are you running? Using lithium batteries? Really good results, probably going to take you a long time to go through that card


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## Clarq (Jul 21, 2011)

Oh, was that camera yours? I made sure to keep the batteries in it fresh because I enjoyed stealing pictures off of it so much. Much cheaper than buying my own. :mrgreen:


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

Clarq said:


> Oh, was that camera yours? I made sure to keep the batteries in it fresh because I enjoyed stealing pictures off of it so much. Much cheaper than buying my own. :mrgreen:


LOL! So far its only got about a few thousand elk on it, with a couple small herds of deer and the occasional coyote.

The camera is a StealthCam G42NG, I got it off amazon on a sale for about $80 a while back. The batteries are just normal Duracell copper tops.

-DallanC


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## Fowlmouth (Oct 4, 2008)

WOW! That's impressive that the batteries lasted through the winter cold. 8)


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

Good grief, still plowing through videos. Too many elk (or Land Carp as packout likes to say).






Few bulls from mid Oct as the rut wound down






IDK why it wont show the second movie in the format of the first instead of a link... wierd.

-DallanC


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## KineKilla (Jan 28, 2011)

I always worry about my battery life as well but have yet to even put a dent in them. I run the Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA's in mine and swap the when I swap cards but they're almost always still full of juice.

The old ones go into my camping gear for flashlights or home to the junk drawer for TV remote controls.


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## caddis8 (Sep 10, 2007)

That G42NG is probably the best camera Stealth Cam makes. It's a winner in my book. Battery life has really improved over the years and most folks will say that a camera will take photos for about a year. There's a star by that depending on the settings of the camera and the amount of images being shot. Video takes more batteries to run, but it's not as much as you think. There's more challenges with overheating circuitry with video than battery life sometimes- especially at night with flash. 

I'd switch to lithiums if it were me running video because alkaline will give 50% output with 50% battery life. When running video that can shorten the flash range significantly. I've had cameras that I've ran the better part of 2 seasons on the same batteries with lithium, and that's with a lot of images being taken.

Technology has really made some great advancements. And those are cool videos. Elk on camera make me happy.


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

I always run video mode. In my experience, you get about 1200-1500 videos per set of normal alkaline batteries with this camera. IDK how night vision IR vs day shots use juice, I get alot more night videos during the summer / fall of course when its hot and fur bearing critters are nocturnal. 

This last run, Oct through April I didnt expect to have lasted due to winter cold. I'm always happy to be surprised like this.


-DallanC


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## KineKilla (Jan 28, 2011)

How many videos are you fitting on your SD Card? I usually set mine for pics only and can fit thousands, if not 10's of thousands (long story but it took a long time to sift through 9,000 pics).

I usually run 32GB cards in my camera and I believe it is taking 5-8 megapixel pics?


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## american_jackal (Mar 1, 2017)

Do you run a lock box on you cameras? I have two cameras still out currently. What I am worried about is hiking to them and they are gone. I am always currently surprised when my cameras are still there. That being said I run cheaper style stealth cam cameras. And I run a lot of Wildgame Innovations that I bought at a screaming price.


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

KineKilla said:


> How many videos are you fitting on your SD Card?


785 videos took up 29.6gb of space on a 32gb card. The camera is set to record 10 seconds of video with a 30 second delay before resetting.

So 130 minutes of high-def video recording on a 32gb card.

-DallanC


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