Olympus STYLUS Tough TG-4 Compact Camera 16MP 1/2.3" BSI CMOS 4608 x 3456pixels Black - Digital Cameras (16MP, 4608 x 3456 pixels, BSI CMOS, 4x, Full HD, Black)

Product Information

Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color, Bleach Bypass ISO 800 images are not bad at 8 x 10 inches for certain uses, but 5 x 7's are the highest size here that we can award our good rating. There's virtually no contrast detail remaining in our target red-leaf swatch, but the print is otherwise usable. All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 16 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb. And of course it wouldn’t be an Olympus without Art filters. Switch to the Art position on the mode dial and you can choose from Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Colour, Grainy Film, Pin hole, Diorama (miniature), and Dramatic Tone art filters. Another way to get to these is via the Picture settings on the function menu.

Olympus TG-4 Manuals | ManualsLib Olympus TG-4 Manuals | ManualsLib

The other important lens specification is the focal ratio, or to put it another way the maximum aperture that the lens diaphragm can be opened to. This is important on any camera as it determines the quality of shots in low light, or indeed whether you’re able to shoot at all. It’s even more important when shooting under water where the ambient light level is always lower than it is above the surface. Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color

Summary

If you like taking close up pictures of small things the TOUGH TG4 won’t dissapoint you; it has the best macro shooting features of any compact I’ve seen, water-proof or not. Switch the dial to the Super Macro position and the TOUGH TG4 can close focus to 1cm. Better than that, you can use the zoom and even at its full 4x extent the closest focus remains at 1cm. That not only means you can get bigger shots of very small things, but you can avoid casting shadows on your subject with the camera body. And on the subject of lighting, the optional LG-1 Light Guide attaches to the lens to provide even illumination for macro photography. Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color, Bleach Bypass, Instant Film The TG4 can shoot continuous full resolution images at 5fps for 100 frames. I tested it with a high speed UHS-1 SD card fitted and it fired off exactly 100 shots at a regular pace, though it became a little erratic for the last thirty. I timed the first ten at exactly 5fps, as good as Olympus says it is. 5fps isn’t bad for full frame shots on a compact. More importantly, the TOUGH TG4 gives you 100 frames, that’s enough to capture 20 seconds of action. Not many compacts are that generous, the COOLPIX AW130, which is more typical, is limited to 5 frames at 7fps or enough for a less than one-second burst.

Olympus Tough TG-4 Review - Review 2015 - PCMag UK Olympus Tough TG-4 Review - Review 2015 - PCMag UK

I did note a good improvement in over and underexposed areas in the RAW conversion of the old school bus photo and one of a tuber on a lake. One might have been able to work some of these improvements on a JPEG file as well, though. Other rear buttons include Info, Play, and Menu. There's a four-way joypad (with center OK button) that is used to navigate through menus and adjust EV compensation, flash settings, and the drive mode. Pressing the pad in the left direction launches an on-screen menu that adjusts additional settings, including the JPG output style, white balance, ISO, file format, and image aspect ratio.In terms of low light shooting, as with pretty much any compact camera with a 1/2.3-inch sensor, ideally you do want to stray above ISO800 or ISO1600 at a push. With the Olympus TG-4 detail is noticeably breaking up/softening and colour draining at ISO3200 and above, with ISO6400 only really an option if you’re particularly desperate to achieve any shot at all, whatever the cost. FullHD video is recorded with stereo sound at 30fps, with optical zoom and image stabilisation. The camera has a number of high-speed video modes, recording at 240 or 120fps, although at a reduced resolution. Before we move on to look at the quality results, there’s one final feature of the Olympus TOUGH TG4 that you won’t find on the other rugged water-proof compacts I’ve tested and that’s the ability to shoot camera RAW files. Choose 16M +RAW from the quality settings menu and you’ll get a RAW file in the Olympus .ORF format as well as a full resolution JPEG.

Olympus Tough TG-4 - Wikipedia

On paper, the TG-4's lens - which is shared by the Pentax WG-4 and WG-5 - is the best in its class. At its 25mm wide end, the maximum aperture is F2.0, which makes it great for low light and underwater photography. The lens becomes a lot more conventional at the telephoto end, where the aperture is a F4.9. A sensor-shift image stabilization system helps reduce the effects of camera shake, and seemed to be effective in the time we spent with the camera. In continuous shooting mode the TG-4 can capture JPEGs at5 frames/second (you can't shoot continuously when Raw is enabled). There are faster modes available, which shoot at 15 and 60 fps, thoughthe resolution drops to 3 megapixel for both. Tough cameras, Oly and other brands, show mushy details that look really bad even without enlarging, specially in foliage and other fine structures. Images are soft at default setting, though with relatively few sharpening artifacts. Strong noise reduction even at base ISO reduces fine detail.

Sample Movie & Video

Above left: 100% crop, 4.5-18mm at 18mm, 1/10, 100 ISO, IS off. Above right: 100% crop, 4.5-18mm at 18mm, 1/10, 100 ISO, IS on.