OM System Olympus TG-6 Red Underwater camera, Waterproof, Freeze proof, High Resolution Bright, 4K Video 44x Macro shooting

This is my first TG-series camera. I am coming from a DSLR, which doesn’t play nice with my kayak on a number of levels. I bought this camera as a go-anywhere-do-anything camera, and to my surprise this is exactly what it is. It gives me some of the features of my DSLR, which is nice, but I kept running into the limits of the hardware. Still, most of the time I was able to get what I want.

I was able to get some nice bokeh, though I wouldn’t want to use this for portraits. Maybe with the teleconverter it would become a passable portrait camera, I don’t know. I used it for landscapes, lots of landscapes, and it worked pretty well for that. I see some color bleeding and some vignette, but I wouldn’t call those problematic. The lens is the equivalent of a standard zoom, so no bird-watching with this thing, and I doubt the teleconverter can do a whole lot to change that. I had a chance to play with the fisheye adapter for about an hour and it gave me just a slightly wider angle overall, but nothing I would call a must-have. This camera is amazing for macro photography, though: my few attempts at it all turned out stunning.

Hardware is pretty sturdy, though the screen at the back scratches easily. GET A PROTECTOR! I am not particularly worried about the lack of an EVF as I wear glasses, though I seem to be alone to not consider this a problem. The screen is somewhat hard to see in bright sunlight, but I am able to manage. The camera survived salt water, sand, being tossed unprotected in my luggage, even being in my PFD while I kayak and perform stunts. I am quite pleased! It’s the right tool for the job and it worked pretty well! The camera is small, the controls are sometimes hard to operate with gloves, but I don’t see how a compact camera can possibly solve that issue: I guess Olympus can add a touchscreen, but touchscreens don’t work well when water is involved.

Now for the software. Argh the software!

The Olympus RAW format is ORF and is mostly unsupported by anything. There is a plugin for Photoshop (not sure if Lightroom supports it, but I hear no), and that’s about it. I got a once-in-a-lifetime offer to get the Adobe software for regular price, and that’s the extent of the support I got from Olympus. What if I don’t want to use Adobe stuff? There is no indication anywhere in the documentation how exactly I am supposed to integrate Olympus RAW with any photo processing workflow, including Adobe’s which they promote so aggressively. Eventually I stumbled upon something called Olympus Workspace, which appears to do something close to what Lightroom does, but I ultimately settled on a third-party tool called Luminar. Luminar worked pretty well.

I wish I had more choices! It’s a shame a camera so well regarded and so respected (the TG-5 is practically the gold standard for camera for water sports) doesn’t do more to be supported by photo-processing software out there.

The battery life is on par with my DSLR! I can get several hundred pictures on a single battery charge! I also love the in-camera modes for panorama, HDR and focus-stacking. Neither of them are perfect, of course: the panorama mode is trying to stitch shots by tracking landmarks in your frame, but when it cannot find one right at the edge of the frame (e.g. it encounters the empty horizon), it gets hopelessly lost. Similarly, focus-stacking would sometimes fail for reasons I have not investigated yet.

I hope this is helping someone.

 My long story (Pros and cons are below for brevity):

I bought this camera as a birthday gift for myself in August 2019. As soon as I started using the camera, I regretted the purchase but I feel better now. I have taken about 4,500 shots (most deleted). So far, I have used the SCN, A, P, C1, C2, Underwater, Macro, and auto. In other words, I am still getting used to it and haven’t taken enough photos to say if I am at a 2 or 4, so my rating is a 3.

AUTO MODE is complete and utter trash. Before Thanksgiving the options I used the most were scenery (landscape), aperture priority, and Macro. When I went to visit family for Thanksgiving, my camera setting was in macro when they decided to do a quick cousin picture. I had to be in the picture so I hurriedly turned the dial to Auto before handing it over…thinking it would work. NEGATIVE! The camera flash wasn’t activated, the ISO was put to 1600 and the photo was extremely grainy. Afterward, I tried to turn the flash on and it was grayed out. I’ve owned about six point and shoot cameras before this one. All of them gave me the ability to turn the flash on in Auto mode. Typically I can choose, full flash, no flash, or auto flash. The auto mode in the TG-6 does not give you the option. The setting was evening time around 6 PM. The lighting was low because it was getting dark outside and we were on the patio. My suggestion, use custom 1 or 2 and set the maximum ISO to 400. Custom gives you the flexibility to choose the flash. Also set-up the camera early so you won’t be caught off-guard.

As I mentioned before I have had other point and shoots. My point and shoots from 2002-2010 either had an internal lens protector that closed and protected the lens or an external lens cover. The TG-6 has neither, I bought a converter that had a lens cover. I’m astonished a $450 camera would not have a lens cover.

I accidentally dropped the camera. The strap was difficult to pull through all the way and because I didn’t have it fully pulled, it fell onto the concrete when I was walking in the parking garage. I had it for about one week at that time. Since I had a screen protector on the camera, the screen is fine, the protector cracked and chipped. The camera survived.

The MANUAL is online, which works for me. Yes, you need the manual. I have bought an external charger with extra batteries. However, I haven’t used the extra batteries yet. I had a beach day. I was on the beach from 10 AM – 4 PM. I took a combination of 1,003 pictures and videos. My battery had about 60% energy left. I am impressed by the battery life.

Speaking of a beach day, the day I went to the beach, the water was livid. The sand filled waves pummeled me underwater, stole my glasses, and almost stole my camera. Despite not putting my camera directly in the sand, the camera was filled with it from the waves. Now the dials are difficult to turn because of the sand. I hear a crunch every time I spin the dial or open the door for the SD card or charger. The same day I took pictures using the custom shutter and the AUTO-FOCUS was trash. I have had issues with the auto-focus on this camera at times. This is the first point and shoot camera where I have used the manual focus before. I’m not sure why the autofocus sometimes fails me.

In my beach pictures, the camera was set on the underwater – snapshot option. The lighting changed throughout the day due to it raining off and on and also the sun’s regular rising and setting. The images were dramatically different from overexposed to underexposed. In low-light settings, I suggest WB Auto Keep Warm Color: OFF. I noticed the photos in low light can be very orange if you have WB Auto Keep Warm Color: On.

The aperture is limited to 2.0-8.0, so don’t expect anything fancy. The camera can do RAW but the quality of the RAW images are terrible. I was disappointed with the zoom feature, I thought maybe my camera zoom was stuck but it really doesn’t zoom out very far (4x zoom).

Camera manufacturers should consider remotes or remote capabilities for the camera. You can pair the camera to the phone to take images but I bought a camera so I don’t have to use the phone. I’d like to put it on the selfie stick or tripod and use the remote to take a few quick snaps. I am grateful for and love the custom feature that allows me to set it to shoot after 4 seconds and then take 8 photos in succession. That reminds me, the BATTERY/SD card door is next to the tripod mount, so if you have to change the battery or quickly change the SD card, you have to remove the tripod.

The TG-6 is touted as an impressive macro camera. It’s great but it isn’t magnificent. The camera tends to underexpose the images. That means if you don’t use flash with a DIFFUSER, your images will need a higher ISO. In low light settings, you need to use flash, so you can use a low ISO. High ISO in this camera is extremely grainy. The flash without a diffuser is bright even when I have cut the flash down to 1/64. At the same time, it depends on what you are shooting. If it’s a bug that does not have any metallic body parts like a butterfly, then it’s not an issue. Shiny bugs need a diffuser. The LG-1 is used with the LED light, it is not waterproof, and it’s too harsh for shiny creatures. FD-1 is waterproof, uses the flash, and softer which is better for non-reflective bugs. LG-1 is more of a focused light than a diffuser, FD-1 is a diffuser. The light can be adjusted in FD-1 because the flash can be reduced between 1/1.3 to 1/64. Focus stacking option in Macro is my favorite but you need to keep the camera very still. Since I don’t always use my tripod, the default I use is Microscope.

In all, aside from the macro photography, I feel I should have bought the go pro. I didn’t know it existed until a month after I bought the camera. At the same time, I don’t hate the camera, it just doesn’t seem worth it for me. Note there is a steep learning curve to get the full benefit of the camera.

PRO:

Waterproof
RAW
Long-lasting battery
Rugged
Macro
Procap

NONCOMMITAL:

Manual online
External battery charger
Image quality

CON:

Auto mode
Auto-focus
No lens cover
Limited aperture
Zoom
No remote capability (outside of phone)
Battery door located by the tripod mount
Cost
RAW photo quality
Not good with sand

Summary:

Whether you should buy this camera depends on what you’re buying it for and your pet peeves. The image quality depends on the lighting, your photo taking abilities, the scene or setting of the camera, and your knowledge of the camera. The more you learn the better the images (to an extent) because you will learn the camera’s limitations. The cost of the camera is high considering it lacks some basic accessories. It does decent underwater and Macro scenes.

Accessories I purchased:

2 LI-90B/92B batteries and charger
7 piece filter (don’t buy) – I only like the ND filter
FD-1 waterproof filter diffuser (uses flash)
LG-1 Light guide (uses LED)
Olympus CLA-T01 conversion lens adapter (has lens cover)
Waterproof mini tripod
Screen protectors (recommended) – Screen Protectors Compatible Olympus Tough TG-5, AFUNTA 2 Packs Anti-Scratch Tempered Glass Protective Films
MC 40.5mm UV protection filter with a multi-resistant coat – love but not necessary

I bought this as a new everyday-carry camera after finally getting sick of the pointless madness of smartphone cameras. It’s worth it, if you ask me.

Good stuff:

– Decent picture quality in daylight, but likely outperformed by a fancy phone.
– Outstanding picture quality at night, way beyond what any phone I’ve seen can do.
– Decent optical zoom, though only a little bit of it.
– Easy to cram into a back pocket without worrying about damaging it. Nice build quality without being too excessively bulky.
– Starts up quickly; ready to go in about one second from pressing the power button. I really appreciate this, since one of my biggest frustrations with phone cameras is how they often take insane amounts of time just to start up.
– Takes RAW photos.
– Manual focus, which I was surprised to find because I was assured by the reviews I read that it did not have manual focus. It sure does, though, and it’s surprisingly good. The super-macro setting is very impressive too.
– MicroUSB charging, which is less nice than USB-C, but much better than the terrible proprietary connector that the old models had.
– Impressive waterproofing. Unless you’re a scuba diver, this is basically a true underwater camera (and if you are, I hear there’s a deep-water housing available too). It’s not like phones tend to be where they claim it’s waterproof, but then specify in the fine print that it’s only good to one meter of depth for half an hour or whatever – no, this is a camera you can actually take swimming with you.

Bad stuff:

– There doesn’t seem to be any exposure bracketing function apart from the internal HDR scene mode, which is frustrating because the scene mode processing is terrible (see next point).

– Seems to have an extremely mediocre image processor, maybe not even any better than the one included in the earliest models in the Olympus Tough series. The JPEGs it produces are extremely crunchy (RAW is worth using for this reason), and the scene mode filters are kind of a joke. You can’t capture RAWs when using them, and it only saves 3-MP photos despite this being a 12-MP camera (which is already a little on the low side compared to what phones are doing these days, especially for a camera that costs about the same as a decent phone). If you aren’t planning on shooting RAWs all the time and doing all your processing afterwards, I really don’t recommend this camera.

– Almost every preset mode locks out most of the manual controls, seemingly for no reason. For example, if you’re using the candlelight mode, you’re simply not allowed to use manual focus. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for this, since the focus is entirely independent of anything candlelight mode is actually changing (exposure, aperture, and sensitivity, I guess), so this makes no sense. Also, every time the camera silently changes your settings like this, it doesn’t change them back when you return to a mode where they’re allowed again, making it an ongoing hassle to go through and put everything back how you want it. The frustration of this is quickly training me to never touch any of the scene modes or other presets. It’s really aggravating to go out and take a bunch of photos, only to discover that none of them were saved as good-quality RAWs because the camera silently turned off RAW capture on me.

– Video files are limited to 4GB in size, even when using an exFAT SD card (so this is not a real technical limitation, just an arbitrary one imposed by lazy code). Worse still, they simply did not bother to add any way to make it automatically restart recording when hitting the file size limit (which would have been a trivial software modification that is already seen in other Olympus cameras), and if even that wasn’t bad enough, there aren’t even any low-resolution video format options that could squeeze more time out of the 4GB limit. The longest video you can record with this camera is 29 minutes long, period. All of the possible workarounds have been defeated, seemingy for no reason, and most formats are limited to even shorter durations (around 10 minutes for 1080p60, 5 minutes for 4k30, and just a few seconds for the high-speed modes). Despite the marketing suggesting otherwise, this is NOT a video camera. If you’re buying this to record video, expect to be disappointed.

Overall, I’d say that this is a decent camera to use for basic indoor and outdoor photography, especially in low-light conditions. While it’s hardly a proper DSLR, it has enough manual controls to at least not be a downgrade from smartphones in that regard, and it’s a lot more likely to survive an exciting trip than either of those are. It’s far from perfect, and the video limitations are a huge letdown, but I think I do still prefer it over a horribly busted smartphone camera.

It was time to replace my Olympus Tough (8 years of a lot of travel and on land and under water use…1000’s of pics). I like that the flash functions are handier. I love the wifi connection so that I don’t have to open the camera as much to transfer pictures. It is a solid camera with more functions than most of us can use. It is point and shoot, to advanced functions. The box did not include the manual or warranty card, so be sure to register your camera warranty on-line, and download the 160 page manual. Read it, practice. I ordered a lens cap protector…recommended. I recommend a long neck strap so you can hang it on your neck, especially for boating and under-water use. It will sink like a stone if you are not careful, so be careful 🙂