Scoutguard 550 Night Pics Question

[AZHunter]

Last year before my hunt back in Iowa, I picked up a brand new Scoutguard 550 and it worked great. I used it, along with my buddy's Moultrie, this year for my elk hunt. In looking back, I noticed that the quality of night pictures went way south. Have any of you SG users noticed this and, if so, how can you fixt it?

Last year (2011) buck in Iowa:

This year (August 2012) bull elk (closer than 2011 buck):

A friend here who sells and runs Coverts said it can be a common issue with SG, which is why he doesn't carry them. I know Covert and SG are pretty much the same internal parts, just different shells and name (and distributor). My friend also explained the great customer service of Covert and said that SG has poor (almost non-existant) customer service. It sounds like you can get upgrades from Covert online but not for Scoutguard. Is this true? Admittedly, I have not tried to contact SG yet, but I hate to think I spent $200 on a camera that isn't going to give me 100% anymore. :thrwrck: Any advice on what I can do to get nighttime quality back?

 

[shadowpeople]

Well, I guess with only two pictures to compare, I'd say we aren't really looking at apples to apples in this case. I've got 2 scoutguards, and 2 bushnell trophy cams (they all have the same components but different shells). One thing to note, is that these cameras have a fairly narrow flash range. It's almost like a spotlight compared to a floodlight of say a regular flash camera. I don't have much experience with other brands, but in looking at both of these pictures, it looks to me like your elk picture isn't necessarily centered as well as the deer picture. 1. The elk is off to the left and 2. The camera is centered around 9' up that tree. You may be right, and quality could have gone down hill. It could be possible they got some bad LED's?

I've had nothing but great luck with my 550's. As far as the upgrades are concerned, I know I can get upgrades to say a plotwatcher setup or something online with the trophy cams, it's pretty much the same components so I don't know why you couldn't upgrade the scoutguards either? However, I know different years of scoutguard 550's look the same, the remotes are not all interchangeable (friend of mine bought one a year later and he forgot his remote, mine would not program it at all). So, there must be something in the software that changes.

As far as customer service, yeah they can be tough to get through to somebody, but they can be sent back and they will send you a new one. Friend of mine liked my scoutguards so much he bought one as well and the motion sensor would continuously take pictures, even when there was nothing, but they sent him a new one without making a fuss.

The bushnell trophy cams only costed me $139.99 at cabelas this weekend with the coupon. I thought that was a good deal considering you don't have to have a remote and it's the same thing, just menu and controls built in.

 

[AIRASSAULT]

I had two 550's and last yr the switch broke on one and the other one took a crap.. sent them in and hey sent me two refurbished ones for i think $75 each.. one of those took a crap this yr alreadt.. . They just start taking nonstop pictures even though my settings are totally different and not in the sun or anything blowing infront of them and a lot of times the IR stays on during the day.. went througb 8 energizer lithiums in a week brand new