The little Olympus TG-6 Tough camera is a great bit of fun for adventure photography. It will go places 99% of cameras will fear to tread without casings and body armor without fear. It may be a point and shoot, with a small sensor but who cares. Finding opportunities and working light the best you can is what sets up good shots. This little camera expands your opportunities in ways you might not think of normally. With built in image stabilization, video, and wireless it can so, shoot and communicate ergonomically.

So first this is impact and waterproof down to 50m. So it can take a hit, and get more than a little submerged. This allows you to have fun with underwater photos. Olympus does you right by making underwater photography easier with some basic computational photography built right in. Yes, just like your phone makes automatic adjustments, so does this camera for different scenes. Camera images captured underwater adjusts light, temperature, and diffraction to make the photos come out “right” without much post processing.

Another great piece of OM professional level technology brought to the TG-6 is the pro-capture option. Essentially once you push halfway down on the shutter release the camera will begin storing focused photos into the buffer. Once you push all the way down on the release, it will provide you the photos from the previous second at either a high or low rate of speed. So this provides you a short time lapse where you can pretty effortlessly capture the decisive moment. In this case my nephew going airborne to douse me with a canon ball level of water.

Since one does not have to be afraid of the elements, you can be in the pool without fear and get a quick shot like this one. In street photography or event photography the best shots are the ones with unique angles allowing you to let the viewer feel like they are present in the scene. So here I got in the water, positioned my daughter under the waterfall and clicked away. To capture this with my expensive kit I’d be holding my expensive waterproof, but not immersion proof, camera into the pool. No thanks…this was easier for a quarter of the cost.

The camera allows you to process RAW (ORF) files if you desire…or capture RAW + JPEG. The JPEG engine is excellent. AI recovers some shadows you’ll find in unprocessed RAW. You can record video with stereo audio in 4K, HD and 720 at various frame rates. It also offers an HDMI out for serious video people.

The whole point of a camera like the TG-6 is to capture moments of life under harsh weather and travel conditions. This little camera is great. Drawbacks…not being able to select AF points easily is one. I get around it by recomposing the old fashioned way. Small sensor..of course, but this allows great depth of view for true environmental snapshots where you can see the location of the shot. You can add both a tele and wide angle converter. The teleconverter can mitigate some of those deep depth of field portrait issues some people have. Small sensor also means a really darn good macro capability, and it only gets better with add on accessories such as the Macro LED light.

Well short set of experiences and evaluation of the TG-6. I am happy with it. If you have a need for adventure, and want to record without breaking your high end kit gear or phone…give this a try.