Tough Cameras
Now we are starting to talk about the good stuff. Tough cameras are usually crushproof (important if like me you leave them in your back pocket and sit on them a lot… or you know, drop a boulder on them), they are waterproof without the need for a special casing or housing and generally they are drop proof as well which is actually quite important for some of us. Tough cameras do come in a range of qualities but most tough cameras will do a great job of giving you some settings to play with, decent image quality and usually also have built in macro capability. That said, you will compromise your ability to get a good zoom range with these cameras as the lens is housed inside the camera body and doesn’t extend out.
Pro's
- Water, crush, drop proof
- Image quality increases dramatically from action cam
- Access to some settings
- Ability to shoot RAW (we’ll explore this a little later)
Con's
- No real ‘zoom’ which is limiting
- Image quality is good but won’t compete with the big guns
- Dynamic range isn’t great generally (how much of the scenes information can be captured between the brightest point and darkest point)
- Can’t add accessories such as external flashes etc
Sensor Size
Tough cameras come in a range of qualities but you would typically expect them to have a sensor size of a point & shoot or on a high quality model you may have a maximum 1″ sensor.
