Well dang it...

I did it.

I purchased the 'Tough Camera'. Olympus Tough tg6.

And here are my first impressions with this camera.
The very first thing I did while turning it over in my hands was drop it.

Not on purpose, but because...well..., I just dropped it by accident.

I put the battery in and figured out how to charge it and got that immediately set up.

I put the Panasonic 'Lumnix' all weather camera next to it for comparison.
The Tough Camera has a lot more heft to it. Both cameras are weather sealed and pretty much impervious to snow and rain.

However the Tough camera has some exciting features that you normally do not find in point and shoot cameras.

Here is a photo of my Olympus OMD EM Mark iii, with a 14mm-150mm lens next to the Tough for size comparison.

The menus on both cameras are very similar so I will be right up to speed with the Tough camera.

The reviews said the Tough wasn't great in low light situations. My first shots were of some of my indoor decorations.

I let the camera pick the ISO in these shots and used P or Program mode to let the camera pick the f stop also.

These are straight from the camera with no adjustments.

Next I thought I'd try the 'Night Mode'. Olympus claims you can take a night shot hand held with a tiny bit of a longer exposure and NOT get a blurred photo.

Okay, they were not wrong.

I walked outside with Charlie and took a shot of the lights I put on the pine tree out front. The lights were too bright but then again, it was just and experiment. The shot was done with a 1/13th exposure.
I can easily see how I could get creative with this on a moonlit night with some snow!

I did another quick experiment with the macro mode. This camera has 4 macro modes. The white ring in the photo above helps light up what you are shooting in macro mode.
I only tried the basic macro.
There is a in camera focus stacking mode, a focus bracket mode, the plain macro mode [the one I used for the following photos], and a microscopic mode.

These are not touched up, but for the last two I laid nearly touched the flower petals with the lens. Normally that would cut out the light and the photos would be too dark. With the LED ring it lightens it up.

I'm sure I could have some fun with this and ice crystals in the creek!

One more macro shot.

This is a bead from a garland string. You can see the camera lens in the bead which is about the size of a large eraser. The white to the right is a white ribbon string which is reflected along with the other beads.

I'll bet you can't guess what I plan to do today!

Yep! Go for a hike! I'm just going to take this camera and see what I can pull off with it.
Can I take as good a photo as a full frame pricey camera? Nope. But I bet I can do some really cool things with it.

I'll experiment with the High Speed ... Slo Mo video feature along with some shots I'll do in the RAW mode with this.
The weather looks cold and dreary.

Perfect I think for taking a hike after all my morning chores are done.