Olympus Tough TG-5 RAW Files

Cows cheering me on during a bike ride.

I don’t shoot in RAW format anymore. The files are huge and unless I’m really trying something new, creatively, then I don’t need to start from square one with basic adjustments. Once I’ve set everything correctly within the camera itself then there’s no need to shoot RAW, it’ll do half the work for me.

When the TG-5 came into my life I still felt this way (I still do) but I was curious to see how the process differs from shooting in RAW on other compact cameras.

Off to take a bike ride!

I tell people I biked across this river.

The Tough TG-5 can shoot in RAW and JPEG concurrently on the same card, which is exactly how it should be.

There doesn’t seem to be any noticeable drop in performance when shooting RAW files in burst mode, still that same 10 frames per second that actually works quite well.

Cockpit of a 2006 Toyota Highlander.

The one gripe I do have with shooting RAW on the TG-5 is the inability to download those files via the OI.Share app. Not that I would want to store and edit those huge files on my phone, but often I lack an SD card reader in my bag and the easiest way to transfer photos is to download to my iPhone and then AirDrop them to my Mac. That’s why we have these integrated environments, right?

Close up of my bike’s rear tire. MAXXIS, baby.

Do I think I’ll continue to shoot RAW files with the TG-5? It’s not likely, but I believe I do have a use case for it.

I don’t love the way the TG-5 processes images in camera. I just feel that it struggles to produce above-average JPEGs when conditions change rapidly or frequently.

For example, if I’m out biking along the trail or in the woods then there are a lot of situations with strange lighting conditions, and the extra steps the processor takes to create those final files are often not what I want them to be.

Shooting in RAW, obviously, mitigates that by giving me the base image data to begin with. So for more dynamic projects or situations, it could be a valuable tool.

Lone bright cloud at last light.

Overall, the Olympus Tough TG-5 excels in tough conditions. It’s fast to start up, intuitive, and most importantly it just takes the damn picture. The picture might not be good, the settings might be off, but it takes it anyway. Then, when you look back later and realize you messed up then you can learn.

And isn’t that what we’re all here to do?

Mac