Camera trap images

I am going through my camera trap images form the last two seasons. This one is a crop from an image using a setup with the 50/1.4 on the Nikon D300 and the Trailmaster TM550. I set the aperture rather open to f/4 and the focus must have shifted a bit as the carcass is only partly in focus. Luckily the raven in flight is in focus. The image breaks the rule of not having the horizon through the center entirely, but I still like it.

Parts for camera traps

Rather than inventing the wheel again, using the Arduino that I planned, I have now gone another route. I discovered that camera trapping is a rather big hobby in the USA and joined a few internet fora to get a few tips. There is a market for PIR sensor control chips for home brew designs, so I ordered a few of the SnapShotSniper II along with a few small pelicases for protection of the camera and sensor. One big disadvantage of the Arduino is it's rather large power consumption. The SSII uses a small lithium battery that is said to last a long time. The control chip of the sensor module is a Picaxe 08M which is programmable. In other words the release and pause times can be set and probably also a threshold number of events for the camera to be triggered like with the Trailmaster 550. I have a few second hand dome ports from underwater houses on the hand that I plan on incorporating as I would like to use fisheye lenses. Lastly, I need to decide on a way of fastening the pelicases to tripod heads.