I’m in the market for a compact, but durable camera to complement my dumbphone, but also be a potential gateway to 1080p amateur photography, mostly nature and street photography. I’ve narrowed my search to either the Olympus Tough TG-3 or TG-4, but I can’t decide which one to get.

They have mostly identical specs, but have a few minor differences:

-TG-3 has manual exposure and TG-4 doesn’t.

-TG-4 has manual focus and a live composite mode, as well as access to RAW format, with a slightly better battery.

Based on that, what does the community think might be the better option?

  • the_weez@midwest.social
    6·
    18 days ago

    I would much rather have RAW files and manual focus over manual exposure. Auto exposure gets better all the time and it’s really pretty decent these days. But sometimes you want to take a picture of a mushroom or flower and the manual focus might be necessary to get the shot you want. But for myself the RAW files would probably be enough to push me towards the 4.

  • xthexder@l.sw0.com
    2·
    17 days ago

    From what I can see, the TG-4 has manual exposure. I don’t know why it wouldn’t… even my phone has it, and TG-4 is the newer camera.

    I think the biggest difference will be the RAW output. I’ve found it useful to be able to go in after and fix white balance or slightly shift the exposure, which you can’t do with the JPEGs.

    The autofocus on both seems to have plenty of options for picking what to focus on. I’ve got a full manual mode on my camera, but I often just use the point tracking autofocus to pick out what I want in focus.

    • Aufgehtsabgehts@feddit.org
      2·
      17 days ago

      I couldn’t find a hint for setting the shutter speed to a specific value. But you could use the Aperture-Mode to set your aperture, then set the ISO to a fixed value and then use exposure compensation to set the shutter speed? As a workaround.

      But I wouldn’t care that much about it, 90 % of the time you would be in Aperture-Mode. Those few times you would use Manual or S-Mode for some experiments are negligible, shooting in RAW would be much more important to me.

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
        2·
        17 days ago

        I think the random review site I looked at had some wrong data, a different one comfirms there’s no manual exposure. If OP could get your hands on one to try before buying, that’d be ideal, but might be unlikely to find in a local shop considering the age of these models.

        I definitely agree, RAW seems like the most useful upgrade out of the things listed (with full manual focus being a bonus)