At the end of his review Jeff Kellers conclusion is "Not good for those who want smartphone IQ or better...", completely agree.

Olympus TG-4 Review | Photography Blog

Above left: 100% crop, 4.5-18mm at 18mm, 1/10, 100 ISO, IS off. Above right: 100% crop, 4.5-18mm at 18mm, 1/10, 100 ISO, IS on. The TOUGH TG4’s built-in flash has four modes – auto, red-eye reduction, fill-in and off and has a maximum range of 7.9 meters at the wide angle setting at 1600 ISO. iAUTO, P (Program), A (Aperture Priority), S (Shutter Priority), M (Manual), Photo Story, SCN (Scene Select), ART (Art Filter), Movie Sharpness. The Olympus TG-4 produces somewhat soft images as is often the case with this class of camera, though without strong sharpening halos around high-contrast edges that we often see. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.Another feature unique to the TG-4 is the ability to wirelessly control an off-camera flash, includes those in underwater housings. It works with Olympus' RC system, which offers TTL flash metering with the company's external flashes, such as the FL-50R and FL-600R (it can also trigger a generic slave flash). One thing worth pointing out is that the TG-4does not let you adjust any settings on the externalflash. iPhoneXSmax has two cameras with fixed lens at 26, 52mm equivalent, Oly's zoom power is 100mm equivalent. But you could use a 2x add on lens to reach that with your iPhone and keep much better IQ than the Oly. You can directly access the exposure compensation, flash and drive mode options on the menu from top, right and bottom positions on the control pad. It’s a shame there isn’t a dedicated button for ISO sensitivity, which takes four presses on the down pad to reach, though you can reduce that to two by pressing the drive mode button and going up one. The camera automatically adjusts the settings best suited for the scene. Camera menu settings such as white balance and exposure compensation can be changed. Other rear buttons include Info, Play, and Menu. There's a four-way joypad (with center OK button) that is used to navigate through menus and adjust EV compensation, flash settings, and the drive mode. Pressing the pad in the left direction launches an on-screen menu that adjusts additional settings, including the JPG output style, white balance, ISO, file format, and image aspect ratio.

Olympus Tough TG-4 Underwater Test and Review - Backscatter Olympus Tough TG-4 Underwater Test and Review - Backscatter

Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color, Bleach Bypass You'll use a very nice 3" LCD to compose your photos. This display has 460k dots and has very good visibilityin both bright sunlight and dark rooms. On paper, the TG-4's lens - which is shared by the Pentax WG-4 and WG-5 - is the best in its class. At its 25mm wide end, the maximum aperture is F2.0, which makes it great for low light and underwater photography. The lens becomes a lot more conventional at the telephoto end, where the aperture is a F4.9. A sensor-shift image stabilization system helps reduce the effects of camera shake, and seemed to be effective in the time we spent with the camera. ISO 100 prints are good at 13 x 19 inches, which is a reasonably large size for such a small sensor. There is a decent amount of fine detail and pleasing colors at this size, although for critical printing purposes the 11 x 14 inch prints here are slightly sharper.From the front, the TG-4 looks seriously contemporary and muscular. It’s all hard edges and is almost industrial in its design. Despite the bog standard image sensor, there is no mistaking that this is a viable alternative than your smartphone or iPad for taking snaps at the beach or on the ski slopes. In other words, and this is important, it actually has a reason to exist independently. Images are soft at default setting, though with relatively few sharpening artifacts. Strong noise reduction even at base ISO reduces fine detail. The TOUGH TG4 lens features optical stabilisation which can be turned on or off from the camera menu. To test it I zoomed the lens in to its maximum 100mm equivalent and took a series of shots at progressively slower shutter speeds with the stabilisation turned off and then with it enabled. As you can see from the 100 percent crops above, it’s possible to hand hold the TG4 and get sharp shots down to 1/10th, a little over three stops slower than you’d expect without stabilisation. When you do have to make use of it, the TG4’s menu system is one of the best designed on any underwater compact. Press the OK button at the centre of the control pad and you can navigate eight function menu options displayed down the right side of the screen each of which activates a fly-out menu when selected. All the really useful stuff is here including picture mode, white balance exposure compensation, ISO sensitivity, drive mode and Image size. Plus don’t forget, shooting in RAW also lets you adjust things like the white balance, sharpening and export compression after the event, regardless of sensor size.

Olympus Stylus Tough TG-4 vs Olympus TG-2 iHS - Versus Olympus Stylus Tough TG-4 vs Olympus TG-2 iHS - Versus

There have been several references to smartphones throughout this review, and to be clear, the TG-6 isn't meant to replace one. Rather, it's designed to withstand exactly what you don't want happening to your smartphone: being dropped, stepped on, or dunked in water. A fast shutter speed can freeze a fast-moving action without blurring. A slow shutter speed will blur a fast-moving action. This blurring will give the impression of dynamic motion. For those in the first group, the TG-6's auto mode can handle just about every situation, and its numerous scene modes are well organized. Going underwater? Just choose the 'fish' spot on the mode dial, where you'll find five choices that match the situation you're in. It is a shame that Olympus did not create a simplified version of its menu system for more novice users, who are likely to be overwhelmed by the options and organization.There are 7 ISO settings available on the Olympus TG-4. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting for both JPEG and RAW.

Rough and ready: Olympus Tough TG-4 review: Digital

Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama, Cross Process, Gentle Sepia, Dramatic Tone, Key Line, Watercolor, Vintage, Partial Color, Bleach Bypass, Instant Film With a total of 16.8 megapixels, the Olympus Stylus Tough TG-4 has five still image resolution options, 4608 x 3456, 3264 x 2448, 2048 x 1536, 640 x 480 pixels respectively. The camera has an effective image stabilizer system that ensures clear and stable images in low light conditions and while moving. Although the basic specs are similar to a point and shoot compact and the camera can be used as such in everyday life, in terms of whether it represents value for money the Olympus TG-4 is probably best when viewed as a specific tool for a specific task. You’re not going to be considering buying this unless you definately want a camera to throw about a bit and not have it break. Whilst the type of person who would shoot Raw files might not typically be the person who would be buying a camera of this type, it’s a nice little bonus.ISO 1600 prints at 5 x 7 inches just pass our seal of approval, retaining full color and exhibiting low noise. Similar to ISO 800, contrast detail is now lost in our red-leaf swatch of fabric, but the rest of the print remains reasonably sharp. The Olympus Tough TG-4 is a weatherised digital compact camera announced by Olympus Corporation on April 13, 2015. It differs from its predecessor, the Olympus Tough TG-3, by including raw image recording. If you like taking close up pictures of small things the TOUGH TG4 won’t dissapoint you; it has the best macro shooting features of any compact I’ve seen, water-proof or not. Switch the dial to the Super Macro position and the TOUGH TG4 can close focus to 1cm. Better than that, you can use the zoom and even at its full 4x extent the closest focus remains at 1cm. That not only means you can get bigger shots of very small things, but you can avoid casting shadows on your subject with the camera body. And on the subject of lighting, the optional LG-1 Light Guide attaches to the lens to provide even illumination for macro photography.