A rugged, waterproof, lightweight camera can be a great fishing companion. And do much more than a phone can
Carrying a heavy and bulky full frame DSLR for fishing photography can be a pain in the back not to mention a bit expensive if you drop it in the water. So, apart for lightweight hiking, photography and tenkara fishing trips to small streams in the mountains when I won’t be wading and will carry my Canon R5 in a waterproof rucksack, I carry a small fishing camera.
I used to use a Nikon AW100 and when I bought it there were several brands of waterproof cameras to choose from, today not so much. Phones have killed them. I do take a waterproof phone fishing, but only for contact and safety reasons, the camera is very basic, and I never use it.
My requirements for a fishing camera are straightforward. It must be waterproof and shockproof. I don’t want to be worried about dropping it when I’m standing up to my waist in a river or lake taking a photograph with one hand. It also needs to fit in a chest pocket of my waders or wading jacket where it’s tethered with a length or paracord to a small carabiner.
I’d used the Nikon for many years, including for all the fishing sequences in my YouTube videos, but it was getting a bit old in the tooth, and I wanted to be able to shoot RAW images and 4K video. RAW images give far more control in editing than JPEGs to adjust highlights, shadows, and other parameters to optimise an image. When you are filming yourself fishing framing the video can be a bit hit and miss when you can’t see the camera screen. With 4K video I can crop in to reframe the shot during editing without loss of quality when exporting the final video in HD.
Since all of the decent camera options that were available when I bought the Nikon have been discontinued, I had no choice other than to get an Olympus TG-7. I was a bit doubtful at first, the sensor was smaller than the Nikon and I’d never used an Olympus camera before, but it turned out to be a great buy.
The TG-7 takes 12MP images, small by modern standards, most modern phones have way more pixels. However, a high pixel count does not automatically equate to better images, packing more and more pixels onto a tiny sensor can degrade the resulting photographs. Also, what was true back in the days of film, that good glass makes good images, also applies to digital cameras. The best digital cameras have good chips and good glass. From my experience the TG-7 is one of them. Sure, it won’t match a R5 with an L-grade lens on the front, but since I’m not going to be standing waist deep in water with those, the truism that the camera that you have with you is the best for the job holds true. In any case I can use the 2x AI scaling in Lightroom to give a 48MP image which is sufficient for a 2-page magazine spread should I need it.
The button and wheel controls of the TG-7 allow selection of a range of shooting modes with fine tuning of settings via the screen on the back which is visible in bright light. You may need to remove your polarised fishing glasses though. The first time I used the camera to take a picture with my sunglasses on I thought it had died, the screen was completely black. Turning the camera through 90 degrees restored the view, my glasses were blocking all the light from the polarised screen.
Most of the time when fishing I set the camera to program mode with a -0.3EV exposure adjustment and let it do its job giving me good quality RAW files that can be adjusted for shadows and highlights in Lightroom.
The camera has a custom interval timer which lets you choose the number of shots and the delay between them which comes in handy if I want to put myself in an image. A GorillaPod tripod sitting on a rock or clamped to a tree holds the camera and I use a wireless remote trigger to start the interval timer or to start recording video.
I can also capture action images by opening 4K video files in Photoshop and selecting frames to save as stills which are good enough for print use.
Nick Thomas
Lots of small cameras have a macro function for close ups but often promise more than they deliver. The TG-7 has excellent macro capabilities and focusses down to 1cm. That’s probably closer that you’ll want to go handholding the camera in the field as getting in that close tends to shade the subject. With a bit of practice good results can be obtained by holding the camera with both hands and using a couple of spare fingers to steady things while you gently press the shutter button.
The camera’s macro function also performs well for studio fly shots with LED lighting. It’s not as convenient to use as a dedicated macro lens on a full frame camera as everything gets a bit cramped when the lens is only a couple of centimetres away from the subject. But you’ll get an image that will fill a magazine page should you need it.
The uncropped images below were taken with the camera on a small tripod at different distances from the fly. The images were taken at f11 with aperture priority exposure and using the 2 second timer to trigger the shutter to avoid camera movement.
I don’t take many fish pictures these days, everybody knows what trout look like, and I’ve never been a fan of grip and grin shots. Now and then I’ll take a close-up in the net or a one-handed shot as a fish is released. Appreciation images rather than trophy shots is how I think of them. Definitely not something to be attempted shooting one handed with a non-waterproof camera.
If you take photographs while you are out fishing and want to take better quality images than you can get from your phone. Or you would like a camera that will fit in a pocket and won’t die if you drop it in the water, then I would recommend you take a look at the TG-7.
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