TALKING IMAGES 34 – OLYMPUS TOUGH TG-5 CAMERA: REVIEW

 

 

Photo credit: TrustedReviews

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I’ve been using the Olympus Tough TG-5 camera for just over a month and am generally impressed.  Some recent pictures that I’ve taken with the camera can be found here,  here, here, and here .  Click onto them and each will open in a separate window. 

This is not an full review, but here are some impressions I’ve gained:

• As shown in the picture above, its small, light, robust, and slips easily into my trouser pocket.  Physically its very much a take anywhere camera, and then on top of that there are its waterproof, freezeproof, crushproof and shockproof properties – so really, you don’t have to worry too much about it!  My black camera shipped with a bright red wrist strap that did not make a good first impression(!), but I’ve fitted it to the camera and actually it is useful.  As you can see above, this is a small camera, and even though I don’t have very big hands, this strap comes in very useful.

• The TG-5 shoots 12MP raw files and produces attractive images: I’m currently processing them with Lightroom Classic CC, which has Olympus film simulation modes.  One strange thing about the TG-5 – which apparently also occurs in other Olympus cameras – is that it inserts OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA in the caption field of the Exif data – so that, if I don’t remove this in Lightroom, it appears in the photos that I post on this blog.  Very strange!

• Being an Olympus, the TG-5 has a whole suite of Picture Modes that alter the look of images but, for the moment at least, I’m sticking with Mode 3, which is Natural.

• It has a very handy zoom range, which is 25mm-100mm in 35mm full frame equivalents.  There is image stabilisation, but this doesn’t work with the camera’s Pro Capture mode, which I thus avoid.  Anti-shake is always a top thing with me.

• The autofocus is fast and accurate, even in low light, which is also a very important thing for me.

• It has a good screen, to which I’ve added some helpful gridlines – but I really prefer cameras with viewfinders – still, beggars can’t be choosers in this case and I’m quickly getting more used to using the screen.  Many think that a photo should be made perfect in the camera, so that no (or minimal) post-processing is necessary – as we did with colour slide (transparency) film in the past.  However, another article that I read recently suggested shooting Raw and only getting the exposure right in-camera, with all else being attended to in post-processing, and I like this approach.  To get maximum flexibility in post-processing, Raw is by far the best file type to shoot.  And if you’re trying to get the exposure right in camera, then its extremely useful to have the exposure live histogram visible in the camera’s viewfinder or screen – to be warned of featureless blacks (underexposure) and whites (overexposure), and to help push the exposure to the right – and the TG-5’s screen can be configured to show the histogram.  To find out more about “exposing to the right”, click here .

• I’ve turned off all sounds, so the camera is perfectly silent.  I’ve noticed that the TG-5’s small size draws less attention from people than my far larger Nikons, and even the Fujifilm X-T cameras.  And my camera is black, not the blazing red shown above – although this bright colour would make the camera easier to find if it were dropped anywhere, especially underwater.

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• This is a Raw shot, taken around dawn, at the TG-5’s 12,800 maximum ISO. The shutter speed was 1/100, which was sufficient to just about freeze the bird, and the long (100mm) end of the zoom was wide open at f4.9 . I’ve processed this in Lightroom, one of the main objectives being to reduce the grain, but I’m not expert at that – click onto this image, twice, to see what I mean!  Such images may well look better in black and white.  But taking into account this camera’s very small sensor (about 6mm x 4.5mm), this is not bad and, in any case, if I get to use this camera as I plan to – in pouring rain and probably poor light – I’m not going to be going after photographically perfect results, I’m going to be after atmosphere, bags of atmosphere >>>>> what it was like being there! (which may well equate to: Not very enjoyable … really … ! )

• Pressing the OK button on the camera’s back brings up quick menus for many useful shooting parameters – I keep it on ISO so that I can change that quickly.  The camera has Auto ISO, but I’ve yet to find a camera where I’m totally happy with the way that works.  There are also very quick ways of accessing shooting mode, flash mode and exposure adjustment, set around the OK button.

• The manual that accompanies this camera couldn’t be any more basic without being non-existent, so I’ve printed off the full length version from the .pdf here.  There’s no point trying to economise here if the camera is really going to be useful – and in any case I like paper copies of such things that I can read in my armchair and scrawl comments and annotations on (in red biro, of course!).

• Wonderfully, pressing the INFO button while the camera is switched off brings up a very useable, illuminated compass – really quite a useful item in any environment – and there are also the possibilities of recording altitude, temperature, atmospheric pressure and GPS data.

• An interesting point that I read somewhere is that although this camera has varying apertures which obviously can be used to get the correct exposure for photos, these apertures will NOT affect the photos’ depth of field (focus) – but then the small size of this camera’s sensor is going to give large depths of field anyway – I don’t think this is going to be a camera for giving nice hazy bokeh background unless used at very close distances.

• Anything else?  Oh yes, the TG-5 also offers 4K movie recording, if that rocks your boat.  Also, this being an Olympus, there are many shooting modes too, including underwater and microscope.

• Should you have any questions about the TG-5, please don’t hesitate to ask me.  I’m by no means an expert with this camera, but I’ll do my best.  The camera’s manual (see the link to the manual, above) is also a good source of reference.

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