TG7 early efforts

There has been much 'bigging up' and love shown for the Olympus TG7 camera recently, the reviewers raving about its macro facility and the fact that not only is it robust but it can also be used underwater. Although my current bridge camera is good for general photography (and is wonderful for birds at range) I must admit that it does not perform so well at the macro level. I recently spent some time in the field with Graeme Lyons who owns a TG7 and was blown away with the results that he got from such a modestly priced bit of kit - a tiny beetle that I could just about see revealed all kinds of form and pattern when its image was captured by the Olympus. Yesterday I purchased one.

Early days and I've only just charged up the battery - however I hurriedly took a few sample images this morning and thought I'd share with you a couple of the results. One of the features of the macro (or microscope mode) is that you can set the camera to take a stack of shots of your flower/moth/beetle - it then gives you two images - the unedited original and the composite stack. The Gypsy Moth below illustrates the success of this feature, the first image being the 'original' which has the outer edges of the moth out of focus, with the second the composite stack that is sharp throughout. For a very first attempt I'm pleased with the result. 

Olympus boasts that you can get within 1cm of the subject to obtain super-detail - and you can - although lighting would then become a problem. I was some way away from the Cydia splendana (below) but have still managed to capture extreme detail - just look at the scales! I have barely checked on the camera's other functions and the 'science' behind what I need to do to obtain even better images, but these initial efforts give me much hope. Hopefully Blogger will be kind on the picture quality so that you can share in the results.