I’ve recently bought the Olympus TG7 for taking underwater shots. Any advice for good shots both above and below surface with this camera or others in this series?
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I have the TG6 and the best advice I can give you: Always take it with you - even if you go shopping… :-))
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I use the TG5 constantly. As for advice, it depends on what you mean by “good shots.” This camera won’t work at all for taking gorgeous close-up photos of distant perching birds, but it works very well for taking focus-stacked close-ups of anything you can get close to. Sometimes there will be an unavoidable faint pink blur in the middle of close-ups; this is a known flaw with the TG series. Since I am not after perfect photos, just identifiable ones, I just ignore the pink blur, but it may matter to you. I’ve used the underwater feature once or twice, but not enough to have any advice for you.
For me, one of the most useful features is the built-in GPS. This makes taking many, many photos for iNat ever so much easier, because I don’t have to fuss with manually locating the observations upon upload, nor do I have to figure out how to sync my photos with some tracking app. Sure, you can use your phone and an iNat app to accomplish the same ease of locating an observation, but the camera is easier for me to hold. At this point, the only time I use the iNat app is for making Casual observations (no photo) during the City Nature Challenge, when I’m trying to rack up species numbers and some turtle decides to bask out of camera range or birds are singing too faintly for sound recordings. Using the camera is just faster than using the app as well.
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I only used it underwater a couple times so no experiences with that - but one thing I only discovered after using my TG6 for a year or so is the “fill in flash” - it’s really helpful even in daylight to get much clearer pictures when taking lichen or moss details in a dark spot, often even removing the purple blotch in the center. “Full flash” just leads to all-white pictures. Also, sometimes the flash intensity control is very useful, I dial “full flash”, then press Info, and can select a flash strength with up/down - often there’s one level leading to a perfect picture for post processing with all the details present, while other levels have large black or white areas (I just take lots of pictures with all the levels then can pick the good one at home).
Just a heads-up that there are quite a few threads about the TG series on the forum: https://forum.inaturalist.org/search?q=olympus%20tg
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