Having read elsewhere on UKC about the Light Composite mode included on the Olympus Tough TG-4, I decided to do some tests before taking it underground.
Judi and I both have TG-4s and are keen to work how to get the best of them underground, so we met up and put them though their paces.
The only lighting was our caving lamps, Judi was using her Biff Light, and I was using my Phaethon Dual. We both had tripods which we used for the Live Composite tests.
Here's my results...

First, a tree lit using 1000 lumen flood and hand held in P mode. It's not sharp enough to print to A4.
It looks like the image stabilisation isn't in the same league as my little Fuji X30 or is typical in other current generation enthusiast compacts. This shot was hand held at 1/8s and is the sharpest of the two I took. I'd expect my X30 to get at least half the images critically sharp hand held at 1/4s!


Light Composite on the other hand - WOW!
Here's my first attempt which was painted using the Pheathon spot, low power at the front and high power at the back.
I only took the one shot - mission accomplished!


For this final shot I decided to try leaving out the front illumination, using only strong back lighting.
The smaller branches were thrashing around in the strong wind, hence the ghostly look they have.


It looks like Light Composite mode lives up to the hype - these shots were trivial to set up.
I think carrying just the TG-4 with a tiny tripod will allow me to create spectacular images in chambers of all sizes.
I can't wait to give it a try underground

When i first read about this mode i thought it sounded gimicky.  But having seen the results...methinks im gonna get me one

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Isn't that a little unfair a test, as it seems you used no backlight in the first photo?

And if it is just for sharpness comparison, you don't mention it but i imagine you used a tripod i the second two?

(nice photos though  )

Rob said:

Isn't that a little unfair a test, as it seems you used no backlight in the first photo?

And if it is just for sharpness comparison, you don't mention it but i imagine you used a tripod i the second two?

(nice photos though  )

Click to expand...

I was trying to emulate what I'd do using the camera in a cave.

One of the main uses it is grabbing shots on the fly, so no tripod and no fancy lighting. Recent examples from this camera are in A Grand Day Out - http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=19719.0
This is how most pocket cameras seem to get used while caving, and it's a great way to get worthwhile shots with minimum disruption to the trip.
Yes - I could have put a second light behind the tree. That's how I usually light my shots with the DSLR. But it's more stuff to carry in a cave (or ordering people around), and was not the test I was trying to set up.

What I was trying to figure out was, is it worth taking a small tripod and using Live Composite mode to light larger spaces or get more dramatic lighting - the easy answer seems to be 'yes'

OK, i think i understand. So you are comparing a handheld snap with 2 tripod-mounted shots with multiple illumination locations. Not a surprise there's such a difference.

I would like to see a comparison of standard manual "open shutter - close shutter" with "Live Composite Mode". Did you take a tripod mounted shot of say 10s to compare with the Live Composite photos?

Some experimental shots using the TG-4. The first two show the effect of using the Live Composite mode. A spotlight behind the tripod was waggled onto the darker points of photo and the results seen immediately on the camera screen.




The third photo is a Live Composite shot taken down a 30m long passage with a, not very good attempt, at filling in the darker spots.


The final photo demonstrates another major plus point for the rugged TG-4 - its WiFi capability. The camera on a tripod is controlled by a tablet/phone. The focus is set from the device screen. Composition and lighting can be seen on-screen and adjusted before the on-screen button is pressed. (This was a 2s exposure; f 2.8; ISO 100., although verticals should have been better.)


The photographer need not be behind the camera, rather in the shot adjusting the lighting, etc before remotely operating the shutter. The result is also seen on the device screen and further shots can composed as necessary.
Seems a great better-than-snap-shot camera to me!

Rob said:

OK, i think i understand. So you are comparing a handheld snap with 2 tripod-mounted shots with multiple illumination locations. Not a surprise there's such a difference.

I would like to see a comparison of standard manual "open shutter - close shutter" with "Live Composite Mode". Did you take a tripod mounted shot of say 10s to compare with the Live Composite photos?

Click to expand...

It's just a point and shoot camera....
The TG-4 doesn't have manual mode and doesn't have shutter priority.
There is a Night Scene mode which uses longer shutter speeds, but these seem to top out at about 4s and offers no control.

The available options are to light it like a show cave with lots of lights and use either P mode hand-held or Night Scene on a tripod - or this fangled Live Composite thing.
We did a recent session on light painting in a cave photo workshop I ran for a group of visiting Finns; light painting is hard to get predictable results!
On the other hand, Live Composite is really easy to use. Last night one of us stood watching the camera shouting things like "That's enough on the ground" and "Needs more at the top" - it seems to work extremely well.

Another thing that's handy about Light Composite is that some part of the image needs to hit a brightness threshold for anything near it to be recorded. So it is possible to leave a light on low without affecting the image - meaning I can see where the camera is (great for backlighting) and just enough light to move around safely to different lighting positions.
What I'm going to try tonight is to do the back lighting, then head back to the camera to see how it looks, then fill in from the front knowing which parts of the image need it.

But remember - I'm not trying to compete with my DSLR, show-cave lighting, tripod and long exposures.
What I want is some camera gear that fits in the pocket of my oversuit capable of decent results.
The proof will be in the images, but at the moment I'm feeling confident it will deliver what I'm after!

Interesting read, my current TG-2 is still going strong, but will be looking at a TG-4 if my TG-2 starts to misbehave. Please keep posting your images and how you lit them.

My very first try in a complicated area of my garden using the Scurion. Make sure you focus but if the camera wont focus I think you can press OK and get infinity. ( Must read the manual again ). Certainly looks promising and could be improved a lot more with practice. ( too cold tonight ).

Just back from a quick evening trip to test out Live Composite mode on the TG-4 underground.
The specific objective was to produce an image close to what I might have created with my usual 'lit like a show cave' continuous lighting, but everything was carried in the outside pocket of my AV suit. It doesn't get any more minimalist than this setup!
Location was the medium sized stream passage just above Swildons 20.
Many thanks to Sarah for her patience while I got my head around how things work.

The trick to focus was to shine some light on Sarah, half press the shutter, point the light behind me, then press the shutter the whole way to start Live Composite.
I then shone a bit of light on Sarah to illuminate her, then walked up the stream past her to illuminate the background. I'd left my backup light next to the camera so I could see where it was, and made sure my head torch wasn't visible in the shot.


This shot is subtly different in that instead of walking past Sarah, I climbed up and shone my torch past her to illuminate the background.
Sarah's light is blowing out the wall top right, but the image still seems to work.


This shot is taken in the other direction - a base exposure was made with my flood light which left the stream pitch black and background pitch black - which I could immediately see on the back of the camera.
I then shone some light into the stream checking the results as I painted.
Then I walked down the stream to the other side of the protruding boulder and illuminated downstream; it may be a bit over-lit, but at least it shows it is a different part of the cave. That black stripe is my body bridged across the streamway; I thought I was tucked out of shot, but evidently I wasn't.


One of the interesting things was that there is a sweet spot for the amount of illumination to get the best out of Live Composite.
My Phaethon on mode 1 (4 days burn time) barely registered in the foreground and did nothing elsewhere unless pointed straight at the camera. As long as I was careful where I pointed my light I could walk around without affecting the image.
My Phaethon on full spot (1000 lumen) was WAY too powerful for this size of passage. Even the slightest waft of the beam over exposed the image.
I found that a medium light output was just about right for this size of cave.

In short - Live Composite delivers the goods, but it's not as easy as I'd first thought and needed a bit of experimentation.
But I'm comparing my usual 5/6 light setup plus a 'proper' camera carried in an expedition rucksack, with some tiny camera gear carried in my oversuit pocket. It was a novel experience to be going on a photo trip and have no bags to carry; I could get used to this!

I now feel confident that if all I've got with me is the TG-4 and a table top tripod, then I know I'll be able to get something fairly decent, regardless of the size of the chamber.

Very interesting, and good results. Agree it must be refreshing to carry no bags on a "photo trip"!

Any chance you can upload a full resolution version so we can see the details, especially the sharpness and any artifacts?

This technique has significant advantages over manual mode, primarily the reduction of hotspots, but also getting live updates on how it's looking! Looking forward to seeing it in practice more....

Rob said:

Any chance you can upload a full resolution version so we can see the details, especially the sharpness and any artifacts?

Click to expand...

Here's a link to the original of the last image. It is straight out the camera, just over 7Mb.
http://www.wild-landscapes.co.uk/photos/i-KRQBh3V/0/O/i-KRQBh3V.jpg
Low light images usually look a bit painterly viewed at 100%. I'm not a fan of pixel peeping, especially when they look OK printed to A4.
However, this image doesn't look too shabby! The camera claims to have used ISO 100.

I had made a few tweaks in Lightroom to the one presented earlier.
As you can see, Sarah turned to face me at some time during the exposure, so I used spot removal to improve the shape of her light.
Also, there are tweaks to white balance, some clarity, and a few brush strokes to subtly change the empshasis of the image.
Here's a display version for quick comparison

Another garden shot. This time using the small battery video lamp I use. Gave more even light than the Scurion. Will try a real cave next week as digging this week.

Duncan, thanks for the high res image. It looks remarkably clean considering what's happened. There certainly is a little oversharpening for my likes, but like you say as long as it looks good printed out...

And OR, that garden shot shows a very good mix of colour balance. Does anyone know if it's left in auto colour balance mode whether it recalculates with each frame? That would be a very useful feature...

I was in Finland last week and was taken to their Torhola, their only cave.
The entrance chamber didn't come out very well using just my cap lamp placed to one side, the entrance was overexposed, and the closer rocks were just about all that was captured.
Live Composite did a much better job, though it took me several goes to get the things I wanted lit without accidentally lighting other stuff.
I'm very pleased with the result!

I did some experimenting today, all in live composition mode:

P2110082 by maxwell fisher, on Flickr

P2110096 by maxwell fisher, on Flickr
P2110108 by maxwell fisher, on Flickr



Seems very easy to get good results

Has anyone used the Olympus 'B' type setting live similar sort of thing on the OM -D cameras? OK it's a built in computer image (think google car vs human driver) and not a photograph, but the possibilities are very nice.

I think it's the same technology, but with a bigger sensor. I had a quick play with it on an OM-D E-M10 in Currys the other day, but, with it being so bright in the store, I had to try cupping my hand over the lens to stop it over exposing. It certainly looks quite interesting, and I'm sure we are yet to see the most creative uses of it, but I can't afford to buy another camera right now...

Is there a manual mode or is it all really "Photo taken by Olympus?"

Cameras will continue to become more intuitive but the photographer still has to compose the shot and do any editing. I see a heck of a lot of badly composed photos. The basic rule of thirds will still apply in most cases. Horror of horror. After one trip the lens glass on my TG4 is scratched. I dont know how. It does not show in the photos though. Seems that area of the camera is not so tough. Have another trip planned for LCM in March.