Olympus TG-810

The Olympus TG-810 is designed to take over from the µ Tough-8010 waterproof compact. The two models still have plenty of tech specs in common, as both are waterproof to 10 metres and share the same 14-Megapixel CCD and 28-140 mm zoom lens. New features include a GPS, an updated screen and reworked controls.

Handling

Stylistically, the TG-810 is no revolutionary camera. It has the same front face as the µ Tough 8010 and the same rear face as the TG-610, with a 920,000-dot 3-inch screen and controls that are laid out in exactly the same way.

Like the TG-610, the metal finish feels nice and robust, looks good and is pleasant to handle. Since the TG-810 can be used at depths of up to 10 metres underwater, the battery and memory card compartment has been reinforced with a double locking system that's actually been pretty well designed: there's now a separate latch that blocks access to the main lock so you won't open the compartment accidentally. That said, this super-safe locking system is a bit harsh on the fingers and certainly isn't as comfortable to use as the secure compartment in Panasonic's FT3.

The four-way controller can be a bit uncomfortable too due to its ring of non-slip spikes. On top of that, we found that this particular control felt too loose. We would have liked it to be a little stiffer to stop us selecting the wrong options in menus, especially when changing camera settings.


The screen still has rather excessive contrast levels and light greys are soon washed out to white. Dark greys have a blue overtone and colours generally aren't very accurately reproduced. Thankfully though, the onscreen image is pretty sharp and the screen is very bright, which makes it pleasant to use even in strong sunlight.

The TG-810 has the same graphic user interface as other recent Olympus cameras. Note that you may notice a slight lag to the menus, particularly when displaying white balance previews, for example.

Responsiveness

The TG-810 has the same electronics as the TG-610 and therefore showed similar performances in this field.

It takes the camera under two seconds to switch on and to save a photo, which really is nothing special. The autofocus is good in decent light but soon goes to pieces as the light starts to fade. All in all then, it's nothing to get excited about.


That said, it's still a major improvement on the µ Tough 8010!

Picture Quality

The TG-810 has the same lens and sensor as the TG-610, so here too performances are similar.


It's the same old story with this 14-Megapixel CCD. Sensitivity could certainly be better, as noise and smoothing are visible at settings as low as 200 ISO. From 400 ISO contour lines on the map in our test shot are pretty much wiped out. Although you can still feasibly use the 400 ISO setting for acceptable-quality 8" x 10" prints (20 x 27 cm), there's no point using any higher settings as finer detail just gets lost. 


The limits of the 28-140 mm lens are again only too visible in this camera. At wide-angle settings pictures are just about sharp in the middle of the frame while the edges are slightly blurred. At telephoto settings things get worse and the entire frame looks hazy.

The stabilisation system isn't the most effective solution we've seen either, as it's only at 1600 ISO and 1/20 of a second that the Barbie without flash shot becomes consistently clear across the frame.

Video

The TG-810 films 720p video. Picture quality is reasonable but is nothing more than ordinary. The camera tends to underexpose videos filmed indoors, which makes the picture look dark but which also helps keep blindingly bright areas to a real minimum. There's not too much speckling noise in low light and the optical zoom can be used while filming.

The mono microphone records acceptable-quality sound. Note that in very quiet scenes you can hear a kind of internal camera noise—like a slight but permanent buzzing. This is soon drowned out by any noise in the surrounding environment but other noises do tend to sound muffled.