What camera to buy?

[Ayisha]

On the other hand, another friend picked up a TG-4 as a spare to his DSLR on a recent trip to Roatan. He ended up using his TG-4 (housed) all week since he was getting great results.

Great results according to your high quality standards, Stu? I'm interested in the TG-4 based on your and other reviews, but I'm a little concerned about the white balance issue that scubadada mentioned and the link he posted in which people were saying the pics just turned out blue. Some people said the underwater settings didn't work out for them. Do you know how your friend got around this? Thanks!

 

[Skeptic14]

I'm curious what is happening to some regarding the tg-4 underwater settings not working, any details on settings/conditions and results?

I use the uw wide1 and macro (with and without an ext strobe) and haven't had any issues (yet).

Also, maybe not preferred to setting a custom white balance every x feet, but I shoot raw+jpeg so there's always the ability to fix a screwed up jpg after the fact (I haven't yet though).

 

[KeithG]

some anecdotal feedback: last week I witnessed a competent gopro diver and prior nikon awxxx diver splash with a brand new TG-4. Never read the manual, really did not understand photo theory. Within 2 dives he was extremely happy with his macro shots (I claim they they were very good). His open water shots sucked.

we chatted a bit and he was willing to admit that he "knew nothing" and hence had no idea why his open water wide angle stuff sucked in comparison to his wonderful macro stuff. He was frustrated that macro was so easy....
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[Ayisha]

some anecdotal feedback: last week I witnessed a competent gopro diver and prior nikon awxxx diver splash with a brand new TG-4. Never read the manual, really did not understand photo theory. Within 2 dives he was extremely happy with his macro shots (I claim they they were very good). His open water shots sucked.

we chatted a bit and he was willing to admit that he "knew nothing" and hence had no idea why his open water wide angle stuff sucked in comparison to his wonderful macro stuff. He was frustrated that macro was so easy....
.

I've heard people have issues with the wide angle shots with the TG-4, and wide angle is trickier anyway. So do you think his issue was entirely new user related or a limitation of the camera? Thanks.

 

[scubadada]

For ambient light, if you use auto mode with auto white balance the pictures will likely be bad. The UW mode would likely give a better result with white balance, don't know if that also applies to video or not. The TG-4 does have custom white balance, might be the best performance. I don't know how easy/quick it is to set up while underwater or whether it includes video. I'm spoiled by my shortcut one button custom white balance on my G7X that also applies to video.

 

[Stoo]

Great results according to your high quality standards, Stu?

Pfft... I have no standards Ayisha.... I just push the little button and magic happens~

I honestly don't know anything about the specifics of the TG-4. I'll send you a PM on FB with the dude's name... You probably already know him since he's something of a fixture around here...

With any small camera, well any camera, if you are going to rely on natural light, then the white balance adjustments are going to fail and fail badly. The "problem" can be reduced with a red filter but really, adding a strobe is the only way to properly get rid of the blue. That's just physics, and not a lot to do with the camera.

And with any camera, get close, then get closer, and stay low. The less blue water that you have between lens and subject, the better. The downside of this technique, which is cited repeatedly by every UW shooter, is that it really limits your creativity. Most new shooters come back with a pile of photos which amount to a catalogue of the critters they saw... an angel fish, a barracuda, a starfish... These images serve the purpose and they are fairly simple to take. But to get to the next level.. the angel fish set against a beautiful chunk of the reef, with your buddy in the background... takes practice, but it also takes hardware... specifically strobes. Smaller point and shoots will always have limitations, but at least the TG-4 has the option of adding a decent strobe, WA adapter etc.

Getting back to your original question about the white balance, when all is said and done, the best that any camera can do is reduce the blueness.... for the simple reason that water is, well, really blue. This can easily be "tweaked" in post-processing with any software.

I think new shooters expect to push the button and get a perfect image and that's rarely the case. All of us that have been lucky enough to get a few "keepers", do "something" with our images before we present them. And this is one of the strengths of the TG-4... it can shoot RAW. While it's easier to just bang off jpegs, the reality is that that jpeg is the result of some software engineer's idea of what that image should look like. Post processing a RAW image will yield a much better final image, but it requires a bit of work.

 

[flyingDiver75]

For a beginner divers perspective, I've been using a GoPro Hero Black 4 for about 10 dives now at 60 - 90ft in the northern gulf. Only light is a small, handheld dive light as I've wanted to get a better feel for the camera before investing in a more appropriate light. Aiming the GoPro hasn't been very hard, but I've not tried to compose any complex shots.

As others have said, unless it is very bright, the GoPro will not focus well for stills. I shoot mostly 4K video and then I can step through the frames and pull stills of interesting things at the point they are best in focus. I have a Flip4 red filter set - you can pretty easily tell which videos are using it with the better color saturation - but it comes at a cost of reducing the light levels so sometimes I don't use it if visibility is bad.

All of the 'Destin' shots on my flickr account are with the Hero4:
Virgil Zetterlind’s albums | Flickr

Best of Luck!

 

[tattooedjeeper]

Fwiw, I love my little sealife micro hd. It's permanently sealed, shoots the same video quality as the go pro, but takes better photos, you can set it for red filter or remove it and it's well inside your budget. For the money, I don't think you can go wrong.

 

[Stoo]

Any discussion about entry-level cameras is always tricky because the end goal of the person asking about them isn't always clear. If the purpose of taking a picture is merely to have it "turn out" (in focus, exposed well-enough that the subject is discernible, reasonable framed) then damn near anything will work. If the objective is to be able to take a shot worth of posting on-line to earn a few ooos and ahhhs, or to be able to make a decent 8 x 10 to hang on the wall, then you need to take things up a notch...

From my experience, the GoPro meets the criteria for the first option, but not the second.

 

[KeithG]

I've heard people have issues with the wide angle shots with the TG-4, and wide angle is trickier anyway. So do you think his issue was entirely new user related or a limitation of the camera? Thanks.

In this specific case it started with new user issues. That does not mean that the camera could get the pics...