Camera Trap Pics

Cool pics! Nice quality as well.

There are no leopards in Khao Yai nor the whole of the Dong PhayaYen - Khao Yai forest complex. Nobody really knows why this is so.

I have a bit of a history with camera traps myself, and you just have to take it on the nose as to the elephants. In my experience it's the males that wilfully attack the cameras, whilst the females (family groups) have an inquisitiveness to them and touch and feel them but don't usually attack them.

Camera trapping ends up being quite expensive where elephants are :+)

wvwv wrote:

I know those images are from super expensive pieces of kit, but does it mainly boil down to the presence of a flash?  The cameras I am using don't have any flash.
 

Its down to the camera trap you are using, it is probably a "black light" camera trap ? You don't need flash, for good day time pics you just need a lot of light so place the camera with that in mind. You can probably buy the same model of camera trap you are using which uses "white light" (LED light not flash) thats better for night quality and video. You can also buy camera traps with flash light instead of LEDs, these produce generally better quality of pictures but can't do night time video. The pics in the link you gave are all DSLR with off camera flash for the foreground exposure (backgrounds are balanced normal light).

White light tends to make wildlife more cautious because they can see it, flash can aggravate elephants and I had a lot of destroyed camera traps using flash. Thats the hidden bonus of black light, night time quality is very questionable but animals are generally unaware the trap is there.

For cats, you have to think like a cat :+) look for sign in an area (pug marks, hairballs, etc). The smaller cats will walk trails but also have the size opportunity to go anywhere, bigger cats tend to walk trails. Obviously in KY bigger cats are not "common" (I want to hopefully say "yet").