As you start running to take that perfect shot, you whip out your camera and you hold on to it as you don’t want to drop it, but then you trip and it goes flying. There is still enough time to take the shot and you pick up your precious camera but the screen is broken and it no longer switches on. You are upset because you just broke your expensive camera that you thought would make you famous and you also just missed that perfect shot.
This doesn’t have to happen to you. Olympus have made a range of Tough cameras that can withstand drops and even water. I did a review on the Olympus Tough TG-810 and now I shall talk about the Olympus Stylus TG-830.
The TG-830 features a 16 Mp camera for high-quality full-size movies, stills and prints. It uses a backlit CMOS Sensor, so you can gain better image quality with less noise for improved image detail, especially in low-light situations. I found the quality of the images to be really sharp and clear.
Capture those special moments in 1080 HD at 120fps. With a 30p/60i HD Movie quality, you can capture even those fast moving objects/subjects that you would normally miss. The HD videos look amazing and it makes you feel like you are right at the place where you shot them.
To snap that shot where you can’t get close the TG-830 has 5x Optical zoom as well as 10x super resolution zoom to ensure that the detail is sharp even at that longer distance. The 5x optical zoom is wide which allows you to get close to your subject and the lens, which is 28mm lets you easily take panoramas and group shots.
You know when you are taking that awesome video but you also want to snap a shot at the same time and you can’t? The TG-830 has a multi recording function so you can capture 16MP stills as you record your HD video. This is a really cool feature and I used it a couple of times.
To easily view your photos and movies after you have taken them, the TG-830 has a 3” OLED screen. The screen offers vivid colour reproduction and high levels of contrast with improved resolution up to 1.30k dots. OLED allows for even further improved viewing and framing than LED screens.
The Truepic Processor in the TG-830 is simply amazing. This powerful image processor forms a part of the in-built iHS technologies dedicated to high overall image quality. Not only does it offer image processing capabilities with high resolution while maintaining high-level colour reproduction. It also provides improved colour controllability in specific colours such as emerald green and yellow. The image processing speed are also increased, along with start up and shooting speeds.
No need to edit your photos on the computer when you can do some editing right on the camera. The Olympus’ Magic Filter allows you to do just this. The camera has pre-programmed filters, so you can make that photo more striking right on the TG-830. This is similar to what many users do on Instagram.
Without a tripod and with bad lighting, you can’t always a take a razor sharp photo. The TG-830 has a hand- held starlight mode which counteracts picture noise and camera shake to ensure that your photos are of top quality. It basically take multiple images at different exposure settings and then selects the best part of each photo and merges it together. Since, I don’t always have a tripod with me and sometimes the lighting is off, this feature really helped me to take some awesome shots.
iAuto makes it easy for anyone to take professional-looking photos and movies at the touch of a button. By setting the mode to iAuto, the lens recognizes the scene and automatically applies the correct settings to create the best possible shot.
As mentioned earlier, this is a extra durable camera that is perfect for outdoor adventures. It is waterproof to 10 m, shockproof to 2.1 m, freeze proof to -10°C and crushproof to 100 kg. Double locking doors are used to ensure that no water gets into the camera. So you can take the TG-830 underwater and take photos and movies and no water should get in. It will survive the accidental drop and being stood on as well. So this camera is definitely great for those times when you don’t know what could happen to your camera.
The TG-830 comes with a LI-50B Lithium-Ion Battery. While the battery does last long enough to take lots of photos, you can only charge the battery while it is inside the camera. So if you want to carry extra batteries, you should buy an external battery charger so you can charge them.
Available colours are red, black, blue and silver. I had the blue version to review but I would probably buy the black model as it looks tougher even though it is just a colour!
In conclusion the Olympus TG-830 is a tough camera that can take a beating and still continue to take amazing photos. Its 16mp camera ensures that your photos are of a superb quality plus you have some amazing features such as iAuto and the hand- held starlight mode to ensure that even the first time user can show of their photos. The Truepic Processor ensures that you are able to take high quality photos really quickly so you don’t miss that perfect shot. During HD recordings, you can take high quality stills so you can kill two birds with one stone.
So if you are looking for a compact camera, that is still powerful, I suggest you look into getting the Olympus TG-830.
Available at Cameraland
Some photos that I took of Cape Town with the TG-830:
