Tips on getting started with TG-6 please?

[Peter Bomberg]

once you have mastered moving squirrels try doing the same with the housing on, and then you ready to move to the have a friend anchor the picture as a "Coral Head/Sponge/Ledge/..." challenge, as a picture of a critter in the open is less interesting than of one where they are in their natural surrounding.

There are lots of good articles about the rule of thirds that do a much better description than I ever can but I will say something controversial, your camera is good enough that cropping is a good option (ie, don't zoom in so close that it fills the frame rather give it some space, this way you can crop and still have great shot otherwise you risk missing part of the critter if it moves (in my case often the head or tail) so I now try to give it a 2" buffer in excess of that I want in the picture)

 

[Peter Bomberg]

@FishCity I forgot to ask what kind of photography or video's do you plan on taking? In my case I find zooming, auto-focus lock, switching modes and turning on/off the flash are the functions I do most of on my camera + positioning the strobes and/or video lights, and setting the the light power. Going from close to medium range is fast but going to/from long distance takes time as I need to swing my arms over the camera (close/medium they are crossed over to get them tight to or near the camera)

 

[FishCity]

For now, just basic things. No strobe, video. Once I get to practice, maybe I will be more adventuresome.

 

[Peter Bomberg]

In that case you will not need to change settings that often (or really ever as you can simply zoom in and out from UW Wide and UW Macro, however you may want to learn how to set the custom WB, this is next for me as many videos have a greenish/blue tinge when the WB is not right.

if no strobe be aware that depth is your enemy as the light spectrum changes but if you want to post process you can to a degree fix it (if raw you have more freedom) and Olympus gives you a free tool that is decent or use Gimp with an add on (amazing but complex), and while I am happy to share what I know there are many many much better photographers here so hopefully they will chime in and correct anything I have said they disagree with.

 

[Chris Ross]

A few suggestions if you are going ambient light, use Av and f2.8 (f8 is achieved by an ND filter and just wastes light) and UW white balance. set that up at the wide end as that's where f2.8 is available, as you zoom in you lose aperture , however the camera will take care of it. It gets slightly more complicated using strobes but the TG-6 does at least allow manual strobe to trigger an external strobe.

If you are deep and don't have much light you can use f2 (wide). Shoot Raw as it will give you more flexibility on white balance.

 

[Blackcrusader]

This is an ambient light in full Super Macro using 100% zoom of a very tiny hermit crab....
around 3m depth on a reef in Panglao Bohol Philippines

 

[FishCity]

Great! I won't be deeper than I can freedive.

 

[mi000ke]

Just purchased a TG6 and S&S YS-03 strobe today. Have been doing natural light land photography (landscape and wildlife) for years with a more serious DSLR, and ambient light point and shoot underwater (with a canon S120 shooting RAW) for just the past year.

You folks have produced some nice clear photos, and after reading the manual, setting the camera up, and doing a bunch of test photos in the house, I'm having problems with autofocus.

The camera is set for aperture priority, center-spot focus point and metering, and super micro auto focus. The manual says to half press the shutter for focus (as with all other cameras) but mine is automatically focusing without pressing the shutter. It that normal? And getting the green in-focus box is hit or miss. When I do press half shutter, it more often then not loses focus.

Also tried to chose all-location focus instead of spot but that was greyed out and no explanation in the manual.

So what focus settings do you folks use to get such good photos? Is continuous focus useful underwater? (It works well on land for wildlife). Thanks.

 

[jlyle]

It may be that your are too close for the camera to focus. Back off a little and see if that's the problem.

 

[mi000ke]

Figured it out. Manual is useless and says nothing about shooting/focus range for standard AF vs super macro. Finally found the specs online - AF super macro works from 0.4" to 12" but you have to zoom in at least 1.2x (oh yeah, that's pretty intuitive). Standard AF works from 4" to infinity. Anyway, getting some nice results finally.