We've only had the camera up for two days, but we already captured a photo of a coyote in our front yard, at 1am. We live on a large wooded lot with lots of birds, the occasional deer, etc. We hope to get some great shots of the robins at our little waterfall, as they've enjoyed it mightily, splashing on their bellies in the morning. We've also heard a lot of animal sounds in the night, and hope to find out what is making them.

The camera was very easy to set up, and the settings are easy to operate, which is important, as I'm not technical at all. The quality of the day time color photos have been great. The infrared, night shots are what they are: a good opportunity to see what's out there. They're not album quality. But we knew that when we bought it.

In short, the camera is exactly what I had hoped for, and is real easy to use.

a very good product

The camera works well in the daytime; nothing has tripped it at night yet. The camera is reasonably easy to use; reading the instructions helps.

The SD card can be removed from the camera and taken to a computer with an SD card reader. Viewing and downloading the images is just like working with a disk drive. Being able to leave the camera in place is a major convenience. (A previous reviewer's comment that "The memory chip cannot be transported for offsite viewing / printing, either, because of formatting incompatibilities" seems to be incorrect.) This means that, for a remote location, the "used" SD card could be swapped for a blank one, an operation taking less than a minute.

The ability to connect to an external 12 Volt battery is nice although the cord tends to pull loose; some means of tying the cord to the camera would be nice.

The camera has no internal memory other than the SD card that the user must supply; the NGS web site description of this camera still has not been updated to remove the reference to the "Built-in memory: 32 MB." I used an old 1GB SD card left over from an early digital camera.

The manual states on page 9 that the camera stores images on the internal SDRAM memory unless a SD card is installed. In fact a SD card is required to store any images and to evaluate it. The technician helped me solve the problem but pointed out that the specification table states that the STC-TGLX81R model has 0MB built-in memory and also stated that only the original slower speed SD card should be used. However, it is only available in 1 and 2 GB capacities, not the up to 32 GB advertised. I use it for nighttime still photography of wildlife and it performs well but the 2 GB limit may be a limitation in the future.

I bought the camera to take pictures of the different critters who visit my porch at night.

I've had a variety of different animals including opposum, cats, dogs and who knows what else.

It's a simple camera to use and has a lot of options, including high or low resolution, single shots, bursts of 3 or 6 shots at a time and video of 15, 30 or 60 seconds.

There is also a 'time out' option of 20 seconds, one minute, five minutes or ten minutes which waits the selected time before triggering again.

Although it's a fairly large camera, it's not too big. The construction looks solid and the strap is ample to cover the girth of a tree that's at least a couple of feet in diameter.

I've only had the camera a few days but have managed to test out the different options. I particularly like the video capability. It gave me clear ( black and white ) imaging. I haven't used it during the day yet.

On the down side, I discovered that, even though the instructions claim there is an internal memory, this is not the case for this camera. If you don't have an SD memory card, it won't work. After trying quite a few times to get it going, I finally called the company's service department and they answered the phone immediately and provide me with the help I needed.

Basically, I told them the camera wasn't working and the display kept reading "n zero five d". After a short pause, the service person told me the display was actually saying "no sd" which meant that no SD memory card had been installed.
I mentioned that the owner's manual stated it had a small internal memory, but it seems this camera doesn't and it won't work without the SD card.

The service person then recommended either a ScanDisk of PNY of 2 to 16 GB. And DON"T get anything high speed. The instructions also say it won't take a class 10 or higher card. I wound up getting a ScanDisk 8 GB class 4 and it works just fine.

Although I will be using it on the back porch, I also plan to find other uses for this camera. It plugs right into the USB port of my computer and downloads right from the camera.

All in all, whether you're a hunter, a naturalist or just want to see what kind of animals are coming into your yard ( or back porch ), I recommend this item.

Once again, I haven't used it in the daytime, so I can't comment on the quality of the color. You'll have to read another review for that.

After reading the review by Wild Viewer, I scoured the internet for other wildlife cameras. Looking at products up to $100 higher than this, excluding the other model National Geographic sells, I found that there are many with worse features and none with better features. My advice to anyone looking for a wildlife camera is to read the review by Wild Viewer, so you are aware of the deficits; but unless you are willing and able to spend hundreds of dollars more, this is the camera to get.

Wanted to see what kind of critters were coming into yard at night and raiding the bird feeders. Used camers to find out and got great pictures of coyotes,and although they were on my list of suspects I was a little surprised at the way they doing the deed. Camers captured great photos both night time and day light.

Several important operational characteristics of this camera are not mentioned in the catalog description and only become apparent after reading the operational manual. No images are viewable on the camera (for quick and convenient deletion and/or review). The camera must be removed from its mounting location and transported to a computer site (or a computer brought to the camera) to view images. The memory chip cannot be transported for offsite viewing/printing, either, because of formatting incompatibilities. Thus, I found the camera most inconvenient for frequent monitoring of image acquisition.

This camera was given to my sister-in-law as a Christmas gift. She lives on a few acres in Kentucky. She uses it for many uses including being able to see who has come up her driveway all the way to seeing which dog has been chewing up her shoes. The wildlife if an extra! Great product and well made.