Hi Peter,

I would have a look at Favaro et al. 2012. TrapCam: an inexpensive camera system for studying deep‐water animals. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 3:39-46. While it might seem a stretch, Favaro designed this himself to look at prawn catches (which you could equate to insect-sized animals). It was cheap and dirty, but it worked really well and the footage he got was excellent.

Hope this helps a bit.

Aleks

Hi Peter,

I would have a look at Favaro et al. 2012. TrapCam: an inexpensive camera system for studying deep‐water animals. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 3:39-46. While it might seem a stretch, Favaro designed this himself to look at prawn catches (which you could equate to insect-sized animals). It was cheap and dirty, but it worked really well and the footage he got was excellent.

Hope this helps a bit.

Aleks

Hi Peter, be aware of that  Bushnell Natureview ND Max and other trail cameras have passive infrared (PIR) sensors, in addition to movement they rely on heat emitted by the animal ("heat" contrast to the surroundings), hence it is not suitable for monitoring insects. For mammals and birds trail cameras are advantageous, but for insects you might look into video monitoring systems using video motion detection (VMD), where movement is detected by pixel change from the camera, see attached papers. 

Article Portable digital video surveillance system for monitoring fl...

Article Pollination of Platanthera chlorantha (Orchidaceae): New vid...

Article Video-surveillance system for remote long-term in situ obser...

Hi Peter, I'm currently working on making a way to use those bushnell cameras to record subterranean insects. I'll let you know if I figure something out!

Hey Peter. I have used BUSHNELL HD max to monitor Red Wood Ants on tree stems. I covered the IR sensors with tape, so they don't trigger and used a time interval trigger. It worked very well, I can send you recordings if you want to check for the quality. The high resolution films take up a lot of storage space, but the lower resolution worked fine for me.. The difficulty is that the lenses have a rather shallow depth of field, so you have to place the cameras carefully.

Maybe you should check out http://triggertrap.com/ They offer different kind of trigger possibilities that you can link to your "normal" camera. I'm not sure about the prices though.

Aleksandra, Ronny, Seraina and Murray. Thank you all for your answers!

Ronny's Pollination of Platanthera chlorantha (Orchidaceae): new video registration of a hawkmoth (Sphingidae) method looks really promising and possibly quite cheap. 

Murray, I am very interested to hear if you figure out a way to use the bushnell's to record subterranean insects.

I am considering recording continuous video then running it through software to detect motion (this way I can adjust sensitivity as appropriate, which might be crucial for small insects). Does anyone have experience with this? At first glance there appears to be plenty of software that uses live feeds but less for analysis of video files.

Cheers,

Pete

Hi Peter,

I found this conversation in one of many searches for a camera that will cover my needs. I'm curious as to what you ended up doing, and how it worked?

I need to document human decomposition in a coffin for a forensic study. The forensic anthropology center is for obvious reasons in the middle of nowhere, and alas without electricity and internet. I need a wireless water proof time lapse camera with long battery life, that can find focus within a small container. Additionally, it needs to be able to shoot in pitch dark and have internal memory storage. I did just find a bird camera that oddly enough has time lapse instead of motion trigger, so that might actually do the trip. But I would love some input from researchers who have dealt with similar issues.