They've certainly changed a lot through the years. The early ones used 35mm film, which of course limited you to 36 pics per roll. So you wouldn't quickly take 36 quick pics of doe standing there 10 yards in from of the camera strapped to a tree and eating from your corn pile, you'd set them to only take a pic on 3-5 minute intervals. Night pics would use a flash. Taking a roll of of film to get it processed into pics was always exciting as you hoped a big buck had come by, but more often than not, you'd get 36 pics of does. It was nice when Walmart adopted a policy of only making you pay for pics you liked and wanted to keep---saved a lot of money as you said you didn't want all the doe pics.
Later the cameras went digital and soon had night vision. Some could take a pic every 5 or fewer seconds and could hold 5,000 pics on a memory card.
Next came the camera that could send a pic to an app that you could access on your cell phone. Of course the camera needed to be set up in a spot that had cell coverage. The app will notify you when a pic has been received, so that's pretty cool.
All of these cameras are very weather proof and the batteries have a reasonably long life, especially considering that you'll get way more pictures by putting out corn, though they are great to use by having them near a buck's scrape. How long the batteries last is largely a function of how many pics the cameras take, and how long you set the intervals between pics to be will have a big impact on that.
