Like I always have on this blog and will continue to do so, I will share experiences with you all. Today's experience deals with a freebie I received from a company late last year. I have been pleased with the product and it is rather inexpensive so I thought I'd share it with you today now that it has been more than one year. I was not asked to publicize this product or to do anything else. The product came to me free of strings so I post of my own freewill-as always:) I guess it was waaaay back in 2009 sometime I was asked if I'd be interested in a plant cam. Actually, the email asked where she should send it to. I replied, "Free? Send it on then." No strings were attached to this plant cam. As promised the UPS man brought my plant cam. I could not wait to set it up and put it into action. It was so exciting for me!
The plant cam is weatherproof and pretty much fool proof. It came with a great mounting bracket so I could mount it in the garden if I wished-and of course I wished. You can see how it was mounted in the garden in the first photo. I was anxious to catch pictures of birds up close at my bird feeding station so I mounted it facing a bird feeder instead of a plant. The company (Wingscapes) actually has a bird cam which is motion activated to take pictures of the birds, but this one worked well even though I had to edit out a lot of pictures. The plant cam is not motion activated but you can set it to take pictures at specified intervals: which enabled me to capture a ton of birds in time lapse mode at my feeder. One other setting that I used extensively was to take a series of three pictures at each interval (in my case I set the interval at five minutes during daylight hours). You can take a series of photos or just one each time the camera snaps a shot if you wish.
The software that comes with the plant cam is very easy to use and user friendly. Hey-even I was able to make a slideshow out of the pictures my plant cam took last November. I wanted to share them with you today. It was such a nice experience to be able to see the birds up close and personal-albeit through pictures and not in real time.
The picture quality was acceptable for the price the cam, but it does take some adjusting to get really good pictures. One thing I found that was not good for the plant cam (any camera actually) was the sun. As the day progressed on the video you will see where the sun was low enough in the sky to shine right into the camera. This was an issue I was able to correct by changing the orientation of the camera. Overall I love my plant cam and am seriously thinking of getting the motion activated camera so I can really capture some critters around here....
in the garden...
