Considering a TG-6

[snewland01]

I'm looking to upgrade and reduce the size of my rig. The TG-6 with the Olympus housing with a YS-01 strobe is my leading canidate. My only question is the size of the sensor is only 12M sensor, the smallest listed in the backscatter review for compact cameras.

Is small sensor a issue? I assume it would limit the size of the prints.

Scott

 

[mi000ke]

I just purchased that package as a stopgap while trying to get replacement parts for my Sony a6400 housing. I'm finding that the biggest issue is I'm limited in how much cropping I can do and still maintain enough image quality. I was able to cheat more on composition with the Sony. I'm now spending more time on each photo to get the composition right in camera.

 

[peterak]

I think that lens sharpness and other factors such as motion blur, camera shake, etc. will be more of a limitation than pixel count.

 

[Aqua-Andy]

This is a 16x24 print from my last trip to Bonaire taken with a TG-5. Cropped slightly and scaled up to 300dpi if I remember correctly. The lighting in the room was not the greatest when I took this pic.

 

[deeper thoughts]

Molasses reef 3 years since Hurricane Irma(pix)

Some pix with the tg6 and ys strobe

 

[Chris Ross]

Under perfect conditions you can get big prints from a small compact but everything needs to line up - no cropping, perfect exposure etc. Noise comes in very quickly beyond base ISO or if you brighten the image in post. 12MP allows printing 26 x 20 at 150 dpi without re-sampling which is perfectly achievable with a good file 300 DPI will be better but not a huge amount. Switching to a different small sensor compact (not that many around these days) won't help a whole lot. To make a difference you need a physically bigger sensor. The biggest issue with the TG-6 is lack of manual controls you get two apertures f2 & f2.8 at the wide end plus f8 with an ND filter. It works great for macro stuff though without having to buy accessories.

Your next step up is the 1" sensor compacts - RX-100, G7-XII and LX-10/15 - image quality is better you get manual control (but not manual flash on camera) but you need a wet lens to achieve the same magnification as the TG-6. All options (incl TG6) need a wet lens to get truly wide.