R.T.F.M.

There is some irony in the fact that I missed noticing how capable my trusty OM System Tough TG-7 point and shoot is as a close-up work camera, because, well, I didn’t look closely enough at the camera. If had bothered to, I would have seen the little microscope symbol on the mode dial. The fact is that I set it to Aperture Priority back in Summer of 2023 using said dial and it has not moved since. Whoops.

How I learned the feature was there was even more embarrassing. I’ve got an up and coming project I’ve been alluding to that I can’t seem to get off the ground. At first it was me being self-conscious about my weight and appearance and not wanting to get going on it until I dropped to around 200 lbs and was no longer obese. Well, now I’m hovering around 190 lbs and am just overweight. Still not rolling.

Mostly I think it’s just nerves. I’m worried that it’s a dumb idea. The other issues are finding time alone and money to make the solo trips. We’re going to be recovering financially from the Alberta teacher’s strike for a few months as my wife was one of those who was out and not paid for that time. It put a crimp in the travel budget. I’m hoping to get there. In the meantime, I’ve been tossing ideas back and forth with an AI program from Google called Gemini to aid me in refining my plans for getting the project moving. Gemini is pretty good for help with spitballing ideas.

I’ve been using Gemini to plan for doing my photography outings in not so good weather and being solo as well. That means planning for safety and things going wrong, right down to being able to bivouac in the Eastern Rockies while waiting for SAR to rescue my sorry butt. It is not guaranteed that help will show up when it’s convenient just because I pressed the SOS button on my satellite GPS beacon.

We’re also tossing back and forth gear ideas and how to minimize my photography kit since I’m now carrying mostly survival kit on these outings. It means aside from some video gear, my main camera for winter shooting will be my OM System Tough TG-7. The AI informed me it was a great choice for the extreme conditions I would be working in, and then it asked me how I liked the microscope mode on the camera… Excuse me? Microscope mode?

I dug out the camera, looked, and sure enough. It’s there on the mode dial that I set to “A” in 2023 and then promptly forgot. Today I twirled the dial to microscope mode and took it for a spin. It’s basically a macro setting, but is the best macro setting I have ever used on a point and shoot. It works so well it’s actually fun. Even better, it pairs beautifully with either focus stacking or bracketing features in the TG-7. The stacking produces a single in-focus image in camera or and bracketing gives you a set of focus bracketed images to blend youself. I tried the bracketing. You hear the focus motor stepping through all of the focus adjustments at record speed and then the camera spends 15 seconds writing to the card. You’ve got about twenty images to work with after. Flawless victory.

It’s a fact that the feature works well enough I’m going to be able to get decent, high-res snowflake images this winter. I can do that with a dSLR too, sure, but the weight penalty on a hike!

This feature being present on the TG-7 opens up a (small) world of possibilities, to be sure. It’s just awkward to have AI software tell you how to use your camera when you operate at the advanced level I do. In my defence, I purchased this unit used as a waterproof camera for doing landscape work on paddleboard adventures and I was able to set it up for that without reading the manual. The lesson here is to read the manual, anyhow. I’ve been carrying the best, most portable macro rig I own around everywhere with me for over a year without realizing it.

Read the fucking manual, indeed.

You already know what camera I used today. Why are you even bothering to read this bit? You should be trained better by now. Seriously, it’s in the manual.