Tag Archives: Olympus Tough

Tribute to the Backup

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The wrong lesson: carry an extra of everything.

The right lesson: identify the things you need for a successful trip and have a plan for when one of those things fails.

Hopefully you didn’t notice it but when I took all those pictures at Silver Lake earlier this week I was using my backup camera. The problem was that my Olympus Tough TG-810 was bumped wrong, turned on accidentally and was completely drained by the time I got to the trailhead. (something I mentioned in my review of this camera)

Initially I was a little scared. I can’t hike a trail and not take pictures because then I’d just have to come back and hike it again to get pictures so I may as well just wait until I have a camera and hike it then.

Thanks for coming off the bench and saving the day.

I do always carry a back up camera. A trusty old Olympus Tough 8000. (I may do a review of that one someday) But I thought, what if both cameras are dead? What if they have formed some sort of a digital camera union and started a strike? Would my GPS join next?

Thankfully that wasn’t the case. My backup fired right up and, well, you’ve seen the results.

It got me thinking about the value of the backup. There have been times when I didn’t have space for it but made some anyway. There have been times when I was trimming as much weight as I could but carried it anyway.

This was a good moment of positive reinforcement for me.  A day was saved, a trail was added to the website, I had a stare down with a fish.  Now when will someone design a rugged camera that takes AAs?

What’s one piece of gear that you can’t do without?

Gear Review: Olympus Tough TG-810 Digital Camera

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I bought this camera about seven months ago and if you are looking for a tough camera that takes good pictures, Olympus won’t let you down. But I wouldn’t recommend the GPS version. At least not this one, it’s not quite where it needs to be.

Likes:
-Picture Quality. This combined with the though aspects below are the reasons I still use this camera day in and day out. If you zoom in much the pictures will get a little grainy but I only do that when I’m trying to catch some wildlife photos. Our Flickr page is full of pictures taken from this camera and you can see the quality for yourself there.
-This camera is a workhorse. I’ve never dropped it on purpose but it has fallen off the back of the truck onto concrete with no ill effects. It’s gotten wet from me either falling in the snow or walking in the rain and still performs. I’ve used it down to about 20 degrees and it works nicely.

Don’t like:
-It might as well not have a GPS. It takes way to long to acquire satellites (sometimes as long as 5 minutes and sometimes it won’t acquire them at all) and the geotagged photos are often nowhere close to accurate. I have turned the GPS feature off because its easier for me to tag them manually.
-The power button is way too easy to turn on by accident which is odd for a camera designed to be used by someone wandering around outdoors.
-Recharging the camera will be an issue on longer trips in the back country since it doesn’t take AA or AAA batteries.