I don’t share or write about digital much here. Ignoring the fact that of course every image here is digital when you see it! My main interest, I might even stretch to passion – is film or in 2020’s speak analogue. May I have a roll of analogue please?
This post is a change, and I’m going to mention my Olympus TG-1. It’s a compact digital, the first in the TG line from Olympus, dating from 2012. Most manufacturers had an equivalent to the tough. Fuji, when the were in the compact market had the XP range, Panasonic the FT’s, Pentax the WG’s and so on.
This is a 12MP, 4X optical zoom, it’s f2 (at wide angle) lens will focus down to 1cm if you can remember which buttons to press to get it into super macro mode! The tough part of it means that it’s waterproof, and pressure proof down to 12 meters depth. Shockproof to 2 meters. Meaning you can drop it from eye level, unless you are exceedingly tall, and it should bounce. I’ve never been brave enough to test this deliberately. As it’s waterproof it’s also therefore snow, dust, mud and sand proof. The latter being maybe the most helpful.
It all runs from an Li90 lithium battery, that can be charged in camera with the aid of a USB cable, and records it’s images and video onto a standard SD card. GPS is also built in, but zaps the battery life a fair bit if switched on. Which, if you think about what it’s doing, is no great surprise! If an expedition, adventure or long country walks are the thing for you, then something like this would be the ideal camera.
I like the colours it produces, indeed pretty much everything about the camera. I do think however that this, like most of the cameras of it’s type do produce a certain “look”, and I think that’s down to the cover over the lens. To my eye they have a sort of softness to the image. Lack of sharpness or diffusion would be going a bit too far, but I think it’s on that track. Especially when the subject is back lit.
All that said, it’s a good one to take out for a day at the beach or a country walk in the late autumn / winter when it may rain – in other words now!
I have written about a couple of other digitals, you can read about the Canon 20D Canon 5D or the Fuji X-Pro 2 if you’d like!
S.H.O.U.T. 