Moultrie Panoramic 150 Trail Cam Review
Moultrie Panoramic 150 Review
From the moment I pulled the new Moultrie
Panorama 150 out of the box I had concerns. Not because of any design
deficiency or quality issue, but only because I only had one unit and I had dozens
of locations it was perfect for!
The first thing you have to understand about
this unit is that it is a departure from the traditional trail camera. All
other models require that you point the sensor in a static direction. From
there you basically hope the target passes inside of that narrow angle and
trips the sensor. As we all know, animals rarely follow a script and that is
where this trail cam got my attention.
Click for Specs and Pricing
The Panoramic 150 covers a very wide angle of
122 degrees. This gives you incredible latitude for covering trails and areas
where travel routes may vary. For my test, I placed my 150 on an apple tree
that divided three food plots. There were no trails in this area, the deer
just wander around between the plots. In previous seasons I used three cams
pointing in three different directions. This is expensive and cumbersome but it
worked. With this camera, I could cover most of those directions with a single
unit.
There were two design considerations I needed
to explore fully before getting too excited - both centered on the mechanism
that rotated the lens and LEDs. Does the mechanism generate noise that might
alarm game? The second consideration was whether the mechanism’s movement
would spook animals and draw unnecessary attention to the unit? I will answer
both of those questions later in our results.
Most cams, like my Moultrie M100 have three
basic modes of capture; Trail Cam, Video, and Time Lapse (plot mode). This
camera has additional modes including:
I had very little interest in using this cam
for time lapse but I tested it anyway. My main interest was in HD Video
(detection zone) and taking panoramic photos. So my first test occurred in
July using only the panorama photo mode. The results were striking.
Photo Results
Because of the activity on my food plots, I
captured over 3000 panoramic photos on this unit. I would also add that those
photos were taken using a single set of (6) Duracell Alkaline ‘C’ Batteries.
The detection zone was most impressive, but so was the range. I caught deer
movement as far as 80’ from the sensors with enough LED power to illuminate the
subject. Local subjects got washed out a little but the results were
acceptable. Using a photo quality setting of medium, the image was magnificent
with great color saturation during daylight and extremely sharp focus at all
times.
Video Results
With a successful Photo test under my belt, I
then wanted to use the Panorama 150 to capture HD quality video within the
detection zone. Basically the camera works like this; if an animal passes the
left sensor, the mechanism rotates to the left position and starts
filming/illuminating the subject. The video will continue as long as your video
duration settings will last. My first test was set at 30 second clips, but I
found that lowering that to 15 was optimal at capturing deer on more than one
zone. Obviously, the power consumption on video was far more demanding than
the photo modes including Panorama so make a note of that. While the unit will
shoot HD sized video of 1920x1080 resolution, it is not capable of producing an
HD bit-rate. If you are expecting the same quality out of a trail camera
powered by batteries and saved to an SD card you probably need a reality check.
I found the video acceptable, but you won’t be making a Blu-Ray DVD from these
clips.
Time Lapse Results
I had no intention of wasting this cam’s
design on a plot cam but for the sake of testing the main capture modes I did
it anyway. The Panorama 150 uses a different format for producing Time
Lapse/Plot observation mode than the previous Moultrie cams. Instead of
producing a proprietary .MLT file requiring a separate program to view, the
Panorama 150 uses a standard JPEG format. This is both good and bad. The format
can be viewed on any device (Good) but the individual file sizes were very
large (bad). In all honesty, I don’t know why anyone would use this cam for
Time Lapse but if it’s important to you, plan on buying big cards and changing
a lot of batteries.
Noise & Movement
As I mentioned earlier, when I first heard
about this camera I was concerned about both noise and movement as the
mechanism rotated. Let’s talk about movement first. The mechanism has to pivot
between one of three positions so movement is necessary. The pivot is
unnoticeable unless you are staring at the camera when it is moving. In
addition, the LEDs are not lit during the rotation and this alleviates any
concern for night shots. As far as noise was concerned it was a non-issue. I
don’t know how Moultrie did it, but it’s about a close to silent as you can
imagine. You basically have to be within a few inches of the unit to hear
anything at all, and even then it’s subtle. But the proof is in the pudding
and a test was in order. My test location was on an active apple tree with lots
of close deer activity. If this camera was going to spook game this was the
best place to test it. In 200 video clips only two deer seemed to be bothered
by the trail camera and since there was no movement, I believe the concern was
from the LED, not the movement since the position never changed. If they ever
equip this unit with black flash technology it would address this issue. The
overwhelming majority of deer videos, some as close at 1 foot, showed no alarm
at all. While our test is not entirely conclusive, it’s damn close.
Battery Life
While I was a bit disappointed to see the
unit requires (6) ‘C’ batteries instead of the usual (8) ‘AA’ which I am used
to buying, it was a small issue. I did not perform an exhaustive test on power
consumption but I believe other review sites have and the conclusions were
acceptable. That certainly was my result for all tests except the time lapse,
which really sucked power due to mechanism movement and the larger file size. I
found the photo modes to be excellent on battery life (some 3000 photos before the
unit dropped into a “low battery” warning) and I never ran down the fresh
batteries on video mode after 200 clips. I should note that none of my unit
tests were conducted in temps below 33 degrees. My farm in upstate NY sees
temps down to -35 and we will definitely have the unit out in those extreme
temps. I will report back my findings on Bowsite’s forums when I have more
results to share.
Conclusion
This trail cam is fantastic. The unit I
tested performed flawlessly in all tests. Setup was a snap and the image
quality is far better than expected. The fact that we can now cover such a
wide field of view on a single cam is a Godsend for trail cam junkies like me.
The downsides are minor, I found the Time Lapse mode basically a waste of
talent for this device, and I found the HD video mode to be high definition in
size only, not quality. I didn’t expect a $230 trail cam unit to shoot HD
quality video anyway, they are not designed for this. The key selling features
of this cam are the incredible detection zone flexibility, the ability to
produce mesmerizing panoramic photos, and the fact that you can do all of this
in a cam that lists $250. That is the most impressive quality of them all. In
the future, if Moultrie adds black flash and live view technology to this
camera I’ll probably never need another cam again.
