TG-4 Thoughts after Solomon Islands Holiday
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I have posted some sample images here..
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3931615#forum-post-56848484
The underwater shots were all shot just with the camera itself, no case or lights.
Accepting that this is pocket sized go-anywhere compact camera, and is not going to perform like and SLR or Mirrorless - I am very impressed.
I will let the result speak for themselves - I think it produces great images (and video) within it limitations. Considering this is the forth generation, I was surprised that there were so many annoyances. I would absolutely choose this camera again for the F2 lens and RAW output. It is unique.
Not surprisingly. when you zoom in RAW, the noise is obvious - it is a tiny sensor. But there is also a fair bit you can do with processing to get a good result.
What I like:
- Nice, easy to handle and use, even underwater which is important.
- Excellent battery life - goes all day and them some, even with plenty of video shooting and reviewing. DO NOT TURN ON GPS! - You will get about 20 shots and be done.
- Great bright display. Can be seen underwater. I was reviewing my results in full sun with head and camera below the water!
- RAW!!!
- Live composite. Wow - so easy! See money shot of lightning in my samples.
- Out of this world macro. With F2 lens amazing handheld results.
- In camera processing for underwater shots is excellent. I like to process my RAWs because I can, but there is some magic happening with colour and clarity with the in camera processing that makes the results very pleasing.
Could be better:
- When in underwater mode, it always puts the flash on and doesn't remember your last setting. E.g. if you change to Macro and back again, turn off and back on, you will have the flash on. This is bad as it always reflects particles in the water back and spoils the shot to make it useless. It occurred to me later that setting one of the presets may work around this, but it's dumb!
- As others have noted it steams up the inside of the display and lens, making it temporarily useless. This seemed to happen when in heavy use underwater - e.g. a long video heat up the innards, and also when coming out of the water onto the beach. Remedy when underwater is turn the camera off for about 5 mins. When on land - leaving it in the sun for a minute or two sorts it. This may be inevitable and not possible to fix. I was opening it and charging it in warm and very humid conditions, so I expect the moisture gets trapped.
- No flip screen. This would be extremely useful underwater for taking horizontal shots at arms length while snorkeling on the surface.
- Time-lapse throttled to only do 99 frames. Why bother? Fortunately I also had my EM10 which at least does 999.
- As many others have mentioned, the charging cable is proprietary and no external charger supplied. Could be very annoying when you lose your cable! Why not USB?????
None of the above are show stoppers for me, but you may want to consider in your evaluation.