I only had personal experience with Leaf River. And it was a $300 model that a friend bought and never used, so I took it from him and started into this camming thing. Was not impressed at all.
Did tons of reading on about 5 different forums, Cudde, moultrie, Bushnell, stealthcam. The picture quality of the cheap ones just seemed to suck, and the Cudde has great quality, but soooo many complaints about them just not working and horrific customer service scared me away from all of them. Jumped on a cam building site and researched and read and copied pdfs on the how tos. Bought a cheap S40 off ebay, figured if I blow it and wreck the cam, I am out $30. But I hacked it, then I bought case and board and a cheap drill press, had a cam put together, put it out in freezing temps and it worked like a charm. Many builds later, I am an addict.

Here was my first pic from my first cam.Sidenote. This is "ripped-ear", my resident doe. Born 10 yards from my house, a twin. Coyotes or a lion killed her sibling and tore her ear. She has produced 3 fawns, adopted 1 other. 6 years old this spring. She was at the house 1 hour before dark on the last day of hunting season this year, She walked off in the timber in the next group of homes behind me and I heard a gunshot and havent seen her since.