Okay, what I know so far. I bought the cam for $99.99 (with tax it's $105.00). I wanted to get two sets of rechargeable NiMH batteries and two SD memory cards. That way, when I visit it, I can swap batteries and memory. The D Cell batteries at the local WalMart were $9.27/two pack. The D40 takes 6 at a time. I started by buying 6 batteries, since I'm checking out the 12V SLA option mentioned below (nothing is said about what type of connectors are needed?). I found some SD cards on sale at BestBuy, PNY 2 Gb for $24.99 each (the D40 can handle a 4Gb SD card). I bought two of these as I didn't figure I would ever need the 4Gb capacity that the D40 can use (I'm impatient when it comes to checking cams). I suppose a person might have found the batteries and memory cheaper on-line, but a bird in the hand...... So I'm sitting at roughly $185.00 and I will most likely spend another $30 on D Cells. Rechargeable AA's are looking cheap.
I need to put one of the new SD memory cards in it soon as I only had a 128Mb on hand when I set it up. I'll post pics sometime this week/weekend.
One thing that I'm a little bummed about is that the quickest refresh photo speed is 1 minute. My other trail cam (homebrew) has a BG1 board that can be set as quick as 10 second and that is where I liked it.
Copy/paste from Chasingame:
Moultrie MFH-DGW-4.0 (D-40) Review 06-09-2007
This is Moultrie's low end camera that appears to be packed with a great deal of high end features. In appearance it looks like the 05 and 06 cameras less the solar panel terminals. The addition of an external battery port is up on the right side of the camera which is covered by a rubber plug. When the case is opened the inside of the camera is removable from the outer case. The bottom rear of this inside camera has a removable slide plate to access the battery compartment (6 D cells) which holds the batteries very secure once the cover is reinstalled. The SD card slot is easily accessed on the front right of the camera. A well designed single switch will move you through the functions while a separate set of buttons gives you the up, down, delete and select options. A pushbutton on off switch is at the top left of the front panel. There should be no problems in the winter, even with gloves on. I did not find any problems with the water seal gasket on this camera, it remained in place through testing. All the previously designed security brackets for the 05-06 cameras will work with this camera. The claim of 60 day battery life is assumed to be what they call “normal conditions” meaning no extreme temperatures and probably using the lower rez settings. This is an area of high interest to most users. Trigger time (unofficial) looks like between 1 to 2 seconds and on the medium setting the color flash pictures were a bit grainy. First impression is that this is going to be a very easy to use and nice camera to have for the price. Using a large capacity 12v SLA external battery and a high capacity card (up to 4 gig) should allow some extended field deployments if desired. The outside pictures taken on the high setting at 0800 in the morning were still a little fuzzy but very true in detail and color. I would have no problem owning one of these as my field scouting camera with its $100 price tag because it will do just about everything that I would need. Flash range and sensing will happen tomorrow morning and trigger times will follow after that.
06-10-2007 Update: Did the flash range tests this morning and as advertised it is to 50 feet easily. The sensing range at 71 degrees this morning was 35 to 40 feet. We will get the trigger time tests and then to the field for all the movie and sample picture examples.
Note: One strange thing that I noticed. To simulate battery life I installed a set of used batteries which gave a reading of 80%. The camera would turn on but shut itself off before I could make it flash. We are going to have to determine if there is a threshold of battery strength which shuts the cam down. I installed one new battery which brought the level to 85% and the cam worked just fine. Long term battery life is advertised as being 60 days, so we will run the camera and monitor the battery level to see when it starts to shut down. During these tests I found that the camera when working would give me what appeared (unofficial) trigger time of around 1 second. I did not experience any of the sleep mode issues that were talked about in some of the early news leaks.
06-17-2007 update: This cam had been in the field for about a week and monitored closely. With a setting of low resolution, the flash and picture quality with flash are both just fair. This test will now be revisited with the high settings. Daytime pictures are much better. Setting side by side with a Stealth I-450, this camera matched pictures one for one as far as sensing so us knowing that the WD series stealth cameras have always had very good sensing this $ 100 camera seems to function very well. Pictures were caught of fast moving deer crossing in front of the camera. These pictures were blurry but show that the trigger time is also very acceptable. Bang for the buck we find nothing wrong with this camera. Back to the tree for the picture quality test set on high.
