You mean the GPS log with the switch on the top of the camera? I was lead to believe that drains the battery, and in my experience it drains the battery even when the camera is turned off and not being used.
However using the GPS to record data on each photo is a different matter, and I leave that setting on all the time. One thing I’ve noticed though, is that the first photo(s) will sometimes have no GPS data because it takes a while for the camera to pick up satellite signals when first turned on.
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I haven’t found that works with TG-6, but it is quite possibly a setting that can be changed.
I leave the log button off, in fact I have never turned it on. I live in a place where all of our devices are constantly searching for service and die quickly. I have it set where it tags the location without the log on or an internet connection. I’m not sure exactly how it does that-but it does without fail. I am sure this was a setting I chose and set up at some point. I would have used the paper manual to do it though.
Yeah, the GPS log is absolutely the source of the battery drain. I have been using a TG-4 for years now (3 or 4?) and the only issues I’ve had with battery life was a brief several day period where I had accidentally bumped the GPS log on. The battery died overnight every night, but once I realized what I did after a few days, I switched it back off and the battery life went back to lasting me several days (I rarely take over 100 a day).
As everyone else has said, the camera is great for macros of insects, plant photos, underwater/tidepooling photos, and for convenience. I carry it everywhere in the field and just take it out for a quick photo when I see something interesting. In periods of light use, one battery will last me over a week easily. In my opinion, it’s the best pocket camera for iNaturalist – I haven’t found anything comparable. Nothing is as versatile.
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I often carry a Nikon with a long lens and my TG-6 in my pocket for macro, mid-range, and underwater. Image quality at macro is very good. Not the quality of a premium macro lens but good. Non-macro closeup are also good. Image quality of mid-range shots is just ok for stills, excellent for video. The image quality is poor when zoomed into something over 100 ft or so. Underwater, still and video image quality is great! It has GPS tagging which is essential if you’re iNating - sometimes it seems like it takes longer than it should for the GPS to connect, but maybe that’s just me. It will also keep a GPS log file, which can be downloaded and displayed in programs like Google Earth and ArcGIS. Very helpful when you’re not exactly sure where you went that day.Warning! If you leave the GPS Log function on, it will drain your batteries in no time, even if the camera is off. I always have a spare battery in my pocket and 3 at home on the charger. I paid about $350 when I bought it a couple of years ago. It’s perfect for me, but I’m not sure that someone who didn’t use the macro and underwater functions a lot would like it as much as i do.
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Ditto. I use the GPS feature fairly regularly, at least once in a while to make mapping sequential observations easier when I’m moving around far from obvious landmarks. But I ALWAYS leave the log switch off, and check often to make sure it’s off.
With the TG-5, I’ve found that zooming in a tiny bit will often help the auto-focus find the intended subject
Not necessarily. With full zoom (full telephoto), the minimum focus distance increases, meaning your subject is farther away and thus potentially smaller in the frame. What you want is to maximize the subject size in the frame, which results from combining focal length and subject distance. How do you know what that magic combination is? Unfortunately, that’s something you’ll have to test for yourself, as I don’t think camera makers publish that information. I’ve done it for two of my P&S cameras:
You’ll notice that each camera behaves in a completely different fashion, but in both cases the maximum subject size is achieved near the wide end of the zoom range. Your camera may be macro-optimized at the telephoto end, but you don’t know until you test it.
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awesome graphs showing how zooming in - especially a long way - rarely helps make the object larger when working with macro; a lot of people don’t realise that.
I’m looking for TG6 on sale or something for underground (cave) invertibrate photog; for when I don’t want to carry my (still quite small) lumix lx100 into caves as it is not waterproof and sometimes on bioinventory trips it would be nice to just toss an ‘easy camera’ in my pack I don’t have to worry about so much. If you go look at Cavemander’s photos on iNat most of their invert photos are with that; it works very well, and one of his students got one for documenting springtails. It out performs my lx100 when dealing with that tiny of critters as the lx100 macro is not as close at the olympus tg-6, so the cropping I do on the lx100 doesn’t quite make it to the tg-6 quality and ‘per pixel’ size.
So…as someone who has a dSLR setup for above ground with true macro lens; uses a lumix lx100 for all cave photography (can check out sunguramy.com if you want to see what I mean); I still would like a TG-6 specifically for easy to take very macro ability when I don’t want fuss.
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Interesting. I’d like to see that compared across various cameras. I know when I did a comparison of the TG-5 with a micro 4/3 camera using a 60mm nonzooming macro lens, I got about the same number of pixels for the subject for both cameras at maximum magnification. The only other point and shoot I had that was even remotely as good at macro as the TG-5 also had the macro optimized at the highest zoom. It’s hard to beat focusing at ~1cm away with full zoom.
Does your camera stay focussed when you click the button and clicks photo when pressed a little deeper from there only?, If no then I guess my tip is not helpful.
I own 2 Olympus TG-6 cameras, we bought the first unit for UW photos in insular regions in S. America which under the right conditions, it performs well out of the box.
UW photos aside where the TG-6 really shines for us is being a simply waterproof camera. Here in the sierra, for a fraction of the year it is essentially guaranteed to rain a least once or twice a day, if we are on the coast, the humidity and sea spray is so intense it would damage most of our (personal) DSLRs.
My partner used DLSRs for many years and shoots everything nearly exclusively on a TG-6, primarily documenting plants and insects, but she also gets fantastic landscapes and candid shots as well, something I really value about this unit, you can go from macro shots of insects or tiny crabs, to taking photos of family at lunch after a long hike.
The nondescript appearance of this camera is invaluable, with nearly no sound emitted from the shutter, it’s small size and discreet appearance, you can take photos in a lot of places someone (responsible) wouldn’t dare bring a DSLR for security reasons, because it at first glance to the layman, it appears to be an inexpensive “point and shoot”.
While the TG-6 isnt without flaw I think it does what it needs to well. It has the same weakness as any UW/wet camera, with a watertight body, there is often issues with “fogging” on the inside of the lens, (usually caused when the camera is cold and you bring it outside into the heat or it’s hot from the boat and you jump into very cold water) of which can be avoided by properly acclimating the unit to the ambient air temperature a few hours prior to use in the warm sun…
Battery life isn’t the strong point, especially if you’re cranking the zoom, or using GPS tracking) however the aftermarket 3-pack of batteries with a charger is very inexpensive, and for the most part has been working well for the past 3 years, (full disclosure: I have purchased other batteries for other cameras from this supplier with less-than-stellar results)
If you are working in areas with high humidity, saltwater, and/or variable conditions, I can’t recommend the TG-6 enough, especially if you like to shoot while hiking on rough trails, the TG-6 can take a hit if you slip and fall or even drop it to the ground.
We would not have a fraction of the shots or observations, my partner especially, were it not for the freedom the TG-6 system offers.
For the functionality and programmability it offers I think it is a nearly perfect camera for general field observations.
Happy to provide examples of anything upon request as we have no shortage of observations utilizing this system with minimal editing.
Cheers!
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I think you’ll really enjoy it. I bought it mostly for snorkeling but it sits in my backpack when I go out in case I want to take better photos than my phone. As someone that has shot with DSLR for years I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the photos, particularly for underwater and for macro (along with internal focus stack!).
Your caver friends that have the camera may have better advice than I but here are my thoughts on attachments:
The camera does not come with a lens cover and that sketches me out bigtime, I bought the Olympus cover that rotates to open which works nicely although it is not compatible with attachments.
I’ve played with the flash diffuser with mixed results in terms of the difference with and without. The minimum focus distance of this camera is extremely short (I think it’s either 0 or 1mm), when using the flash one needs to hold the camera further from the subject, and with the diffuser that distance is extended further (maybe 6-8 cm). In all my days of shooting DSLR I never really used flash, and I think others speak pretty highly of this attachment, so it may be a worthy investment especially given that you’ll likely be using flash 100% of the time in caves.
The case Olympus sells (CSCH-121) is nice and snug and can be clipped to a belt or pack. Only tradeoff is that the camera will not fit if using the diffuser attachment or others. It does fit with the lens cover though. If you plan on leaving the diffuser on there I’d hunt around for another case that has a little more room.
Macro photography is often a lot easier using Manual Focus. It appears that you do have this option on the XP140, and should be a lot simpler than the pre-focussing on your hand method. Set it to manual focus, and then set the focus to the closest it will go. Then to focus the image, simply move the camera back and forth until the subject is in focus. If it is difficult to see this on the camera screen, then take a few different shots as you move it back and forth either side of the focus point (this is a good idea in any case to be sure). Then you can pick out the sharpest result when you get them off the camera later. In this way you get the maximum magnification available from the camera. The same trick works well with smart phones (e.g. mine has a manual focus option in “Pro” mode).
Have you tried using your phone in this manner? They are often relatively good at macro with a little practice.
Regarding the TG-6 – I have no experience with it myself, but it does look like a good option as a compact and rugged macro solution with both focus stacking options and GPS built in. The focus stacking could be a useful upgrade over a phone camera depending on how well it works. Otherwise I think it’s a question of how much the fully waterproof/rugged aspects are valuable to you above and beyond what you can do with a phone.
Thanks!
I wish it had a hotshoe really; i use flashes in cave photog a lot and use radio triggers. I can lightpaint too (used to all the time; still do for big pits) but my main style is moved towards backlighting with flash. I guess i could go old school flash too - i used to not have triggers so i would just do focus lock, lights out, 1 sec exposure and count off for my friend to manually fire the external flash while the shutter was open for a sec. Works great underground cauze other than the burst of light there is no light xD
…i sniped a new in box one on ebay for $300 last night so officially caved (ha!) now.
I have a small external flash that is flash triggered; so i may play with that. Even on its own, itll probably end up in a small Pelican case tbh. Ill look at the Olympus one but im guessing Pelican is cheaper.
Macro mode has the special lights on it uses so Im not worries about that.
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I agree the Sony bridge cameras are great. I have (an older) one and used it for safari. But consider the price point. The TG-6 is +/- one third the cost.
A shortcoming of the TG-6 is the limited zoom. So if you also wish to take photos of birds or animals at a distance, choose the RX10.
I take issue with Sony in that they do not play with others.
If you are looking for a camera and never had one, they may be ok. But you will be stuck with Sony only. Not even their hotshoes work with other brands, you need to buy Sony brand for Sony, no aftermarket no third party no mix and matching, so you PAY for it. On the other hand, Olympus and Panasonic systems all work with each other, and even other brands don’t specialise themselves so far in that no third party stuff works, and there are lens adapters, etc. Sony you are stuck with Sony. They are worse than Apple in that sense.
I review my attempt at them (due to raves on IQ and that they bettered their waterproofing) here, along with other cameras and their abilities in macro and hard lighting and water:
https://www.sunguramy.com/blog/2021/7/cameras-for-cave-photography
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I’m so happy to see this post. A post here about "best cameras for iNat photos’’ a week or two ago inspired me look seriously at the TG-6. Had such a hard time finding a source in Canada I almost gave up, but finally found a local one. Hope to get it in the next few days!
I wanted this camera because of the macro capabilities and need something light and easy to use. My days of struggling with my Canon 60D are behind me. 
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Look at the Sony RX10 … great for pretty well all wildlife and plant subjects but in your specific instance it has manual focus option aided by “focus peaking” (google it) which totally deals with that focus on the background issue. It is bigger than that Olympus pocket camera which I looked at once but it also takes better quality photographs and offers the ability to get birds at a distance - well, plants at a distance too come to that.