Hoping you can help me help a friend. She currently uses an Olympus TG6 and has housing, strobes, wet lenses etc. Loves the size, ease of use, macro/small critter capabilities, flexibility on a dive. What she doesn't love is how it does on wider scenes, soft/messy/ugly backgrounds (I agree!) and battery life when she does videos.

Wants: better overall image quality, small/light, flexibility as the Oly offers, better video and battery life, available now. Budget would be a flexible USD$1500ish for camera/housing. I don't keep up enough to know where to really point her and hoping you all can help. Lionfish for photo tax.

Hi Kristin,
with a $1500 USD budget, the main options i would see would be:

an action cam rig (GoPro, DJI) with the wide angle lens or - erhm, a mobile phone in a housing.
Why not stay with the TG for stills, macro stills and macro video and stick a gopro or similar on top (with the wide angle accessory lens) for wide angle video?
Compact, cheap and best of both worlds, since she'd still keep the current rig.

Or:
a second-hand compact rig, which would allow her to do video, stills and macro / wide angle on the same dive.

Canon G7, Sony RX100Va or above for instance.
The issue is that compacts are really bricks in the water and need a lot of floats to be neutral and balanced in the water for video, which effectively kills off the compact-form factor...
But other than that they are great, and indeed way better than a TG for video.

I shoot on a Lumix LX10 compact and happy with it (you can see clips shot on it here) despite have given up on the compact form long ago, and missing features I would need (extended battery life, HDMI screen connectivity, 4K 60fps...) - my " compact" rig weighs over 10kg on land, to give you an idea...

A more recent compact like the Canon V1 would be great, would set you back more than $1500, and micro four-thirds rigs (GH5) are not really compact either.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by bghazzal

Another option to try is the Canon R50. The camera body is small, like the M series before it, and it has an APS-c sensor. But as Ben says, these things tend to be bricks when they’re all kitted out, what with lights and all that.

I still have an old TG-5 for use when I want to travel light. They are hard to beat for portability, and they are supremely flexible. Your friend may want to add an “air” lens which helps restore the 25mm angle of view underwater. See the example below, which is pretty much the full width of the tiny sensor. And, it can still shoot good macro. Alternatively, you can add a good wet lens, but this adds to the size and weight of the kit. I have a WWL-1, but I’ve never tried it on the Olympus.

It is a difficult question, sure you could go with a 1" sensor compact like a G7X series or similar, the wide end would probably be better than the TG, but it's still only 24mm behind a flat port so not very wide.. The macro experience would be worse compared to the TG because they don't focus that close and you would be adding a macro diopter which limits the working distance, for example the G7XIII will only focus between 60 and 120mm with a CMC-2 dipoter, It's not like the TG where you start out a bit further back and move in focusing as you go, you have to place it in the range or very close or you won't recognise what you are pointing at. The shots once you get them will be fine of course. As soon as you move away from the TG you face a choice either a zoom with a diopter or a camera with a dedicated macro lens. The battery life will still be an achilles heel till you move up to something at least like a m43 camera.

An OM camera with an AOI housing would still be fairly compact but the flexibility is reduced, but you can use the 60mm macro or 30mm macro lens with it.. Some would argue that's a good thing, but I get that people see the attraction of being able to be flexible on a dive.

Another option is possibly weefine housing for TG, that has an extra battery and add a wide lens to it. Just don't get the one with the electric vacuum pump, I know someone who has had endless trouble with it.

A M4/3 with some intelligent lens choices seems like the way to go. I've had very good luck on the used market shopping for cameras in the 6-10 year old range which still produce excellent results.

Kristin:

At the moment Reef Photo has what looks like a very slightly used R50 camera and lens, Nauticam housing tray and arms for $1728.00 It would need a different port or an add-on diopter or wwl or whatever, but otherwise, I think that cold be a good choice with room to grow and I think that is about $800 less than new retail.

*I do a lot of business with reef but have no other connection with them or with that camera and housing.

Thanks, Everyone! Super helpful. It sounds to me like she's not really gaining as much as she's losing by switching, but only she can figure out which elements are most important to her. I'm passing it all on to her.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to add your thoughts and suggestions!

Can she fit a Nauticam wwl-c on her current housing? It’s €1100 iirc and works with 24 mm lenses to produce 130 degrees very good iq.

A thing to consider for stills is to shoot in raw (probably does so already) and use AI-based noise reduction and sharpening features afterwards. I think this works really well on the 16 MP images from my EPL-5 (m43) and it makes a HUGE difference for the topside pictures from my Olympus XZ10, which may be comparable to a TG6. I use on-1 photo raw, which has a very peculiar user interface but they also offer a photoshop plugin. It‘s free to test, ideal on a rainy weekend, and cheap to buy if she likes it. I posted some suggested settings to try for a start on this site but all of the available tools are likely giving an „upped“ result compared to the camera-jpeg.

Combine this with Ben’s addition on a GoPro to the rig and that could give a flexible & somewhat redundant solution.

Apart from that I always notice a massive improvement in image quality and life quality as well when I travel to a place with lots of sun and clear water. Sigh….