PHOTO QUALITY. This 12-megapixel waterproof and rugged camera captured images with good quality. We judged this model very good for outdoor performance, such as shooting landscapes in the daytime; fair for indoor performance, such as photographing a well-lit basketball game in a gym.
FLASH. The TG-5 captured flash shots that were fair. In our distance test, we found the camera's flash could illuminate close subjects, but had significant problems with distant subjects. The flash also has good, relatively even coverage.
LENS. This camera includes a 4x zoom lens, a bit more zoom than a standard 3x. The lens also has very wide-angle (25mm) capability that's very useful for landscapes and group portraits, although you may notice a bit of distortion when you're shooting faces up close, for instance.
IMAGE STABILIZATION. This is an important feature; taking hand-held shots at the telephoto end of the zoom range can generally blur or soften images due to the slight movement of your hands. Shooting telephoto in well-lit scenes, this model did a very good job of minimizing the effects of camera shake. In low-light settings, it performed very well and rarely produced blurry photos. Overall, the shake reduction results from our tests were very good.
SPEED. In terms of performance, the Olympus TG-5 powers up very quickly. It has a very short interval between shots, which can be important when shooting fast-moving or unpredictable subjects.
VIDEO. The Olympus TG-5 takes good video. It also captures 4K-UHD video at 3840 x 2160 60p or 30i. As for sound, it captures fair audio in stereo.
