Reports

On September 11-13, 2018 I compared five cameras mounted in the window of the lab looking south towards the Valley Life Science Building.  The cameras were:

I tried to take photos of nearly the same size and at the same time.  The Pi-cam photo is from two days before the others but at the same time of day and similar sky conditions.

Fig 1. The Bushnells (top row, HD on the right) have pretty good color but the sky and clouds are over exposed and look a little hazy.  The Moultrie (middle row, left) has a wide format, unnatural looking colors and is dark overall.  I think the Canon (middle row, right) has the most natural looking photo.  The Pi-cam (bottom row) has a little warm looking colors.

I then cut out a small portion in the middle of each photo to zoom in.  To make the areas match I had to resample all the image except the Pi-cam to 640x480.

Fig 2.  A sub-sample of the images to show the sharpness of the photos.  The Bushnells (top row) are a little fuzzy maybe due to over exposure and haze.  The Moultrie and Canon (middle row) are similar in sharpness.  The Pi-cam (bottom row) is obviously fuzzy.

I calculated GCC from a block of trees in the middle of the photos and the patch of lawn in the bottom middle of the photo.  The trees are dark green and the grass is a bright green.

Only the Moultrie seems to be an outlier.  Even the Pi-cam with its slightly warm looking colors and fuzziness seems to be middle of the pack when it comes to GCC.

These cameras, except for the Moultrie, are being further tested at Bouldin Alfalfa along side the Stardot Phenocam, but for the moment my favorite is the old Canon A series point-n-shoot.