TG-5 is an “advanced cellphone”, aimed for social media posting, while allowing a bit more flexibility than a regular one. The camera is made to help you, to guess what you want, and to deliver it, on a way that will look good on social media (though not in a truly way, assuming there is any trueness on digital photography). If you’re a beginner, none of this will bother you. White balance (Kelvin selection mode) can be done up to a point, but there will probably be too many greens and too few magentas… You get what you pay for, and it’s a lot, comparing to what you’d get half a decade ago. It happens with dynamic range, even on Raw files (they are artificially flattened), resulting in areas with excessive noise (the ones that should have been darker) even shooting at base ISO. It’s all about computational photography, rather than an optics. Overall, you don’t really control any setting on TG-5. It’s not made for real portraits: subject isolation isn’t great, bokeh is terrible, skin tone isn’t accurate or flattering, but under such size (of sensor, of lens and body) it couldn’t really be better.Chromatic aberration is very noticeable (something to be expected on these small, plastic lenses).It is useless for most hand held scenarios (you’d certainly move the camera and miss focus in between manually focusing and pressing the shutter button). It vanishes as you stop rotating the focusing knob, so you cannot focus by moving the camera back and forward. Manual focus assisting (zooming while focusing) maybe works with a tripod.Image, overall, won’t be so different from one setting to another (except, of course, exposure). I really cannot get how Olympus came out with these numbers, as depth of field hasn’t much to do with full frame’s. They change to higher values when you zoom in. There are only three aperture values to be selected, named F/2, F/2.8 and F/8.Maybe Olympus engineers want us to buy TG-6 (there are rumours on a near future announcement)… So far, there are a few work arounds, I will explain later. You cannot set speed! That’s TG-5 inexplicable major flaw. There is no manual mode – only an A (aperture priority mode), which is the only one I use.This is what I realised (and didn’t like) from those first experiences: I prefer to take a new camera (or lens) with me, on regular daily life for a few days, to understand it, before taking it underwater. There’s nothing worse than missing a Nat Geo moment, jut because you’re not familiarised with your rig. Diving is time consuming and expensive, photo opportunities don’t often come, so it can be really frustrating. ![]() The worst mistake a photographer can make is to get a new camera and jump straight in the water without prior testing. RGBlue (at the left) is used as a focusing light. Olympus TG-5 underwater macro rig – AOI UCL 09 + UCL 900 for maximum magnification, and the option to use Mini Gear MS-03 or a small strobe for lighting. I already had AOI UCL – 09 and UCL – 900, which I use with my Nikon D810 Nauticam rig. – Minigear MS-03 Snoot Diving Light (360 SGD, at Divesea website) – AOI UWL-400 Wide Conversion Lens (555 SGD, at Divesea website) It halves TG-5 focal distance, for true wide angle images and video. Olympus has an adaptor to fix them at the front, which can cause troubles as the cables swing in front of the front port. ![]()
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