Diving with TG-6 questions
6 months ago
I recently purchased a used TG-6 for an upcoming trip. Sounds like it will be great for kayaking, snorkeling, and to generally take to the beach. My wife and I are also new scuba divers and I really want to get some decent photos at depth. (I understand that task loading is a concern, planning to just throw this into aperture priority, point and shoot when I feel up to it, prioritize diving well and safely, fully prepared to dive without shooting anything.)
So now I'm trying to figure out the if/what question on a housing. Would love some info on:
- Seafrogs vs Olympus housing? I recently upgraded my main camera to mirrorless and bought some new lenses, so I've kinda spent most of my photography budget for a while. Would love to save the money unless the Oly is known to be a lot better.
- Seems like the wide angle magnifier "fish eye lens" would be really useful? I'm more interested in capturing the scene, the coral, the fish rather than macro. (Again, as a new diver I don't want to focus too much mental energy/time on photography.) But how much of an image quality hit do these introduce?
- The Seafrogs housing looks like it has a vacuum port that requires an additional pump to use? Is that just to verify no leaks or is it useful for buoyancy as well? Seems like that won't significantly affect mass or volume, so probably not buoyancy. Will this be negatively buoyant, which I assume is what I want?
- Sounds like some people have taken a TG-6 down to 50 ft (or maybe even to 60 ft?) without issues. If the hassle and IQ with a housing are bad enough, would it possibly be better to just go with the camera naked? Is that considered very risky or only slightly risky?
Thanks for any info you can give!
- Jake