Apart from being the champion for the micro four-thirds mirrorless camera, Olympus is also famous for its Tough line of adventure cameras, which have been around long before GoPro.
Yes, GoPro has taken over the world by storm with its compact action video camera and Olympus was caught off-guard.
Seems like the Japanese company has an answer to the GoPro at last. The TG-Tracker is a video camera that records in 4K like most action adventure camera but it is its ability to do GPS location logs that has people talking.
What that means is that the camera can find the location where you shot the footage and even records the elevation of the camera. Once connected to the smartphone you will know exactly where you shot it via Google Maps and the accompanying video footage will be shown along with the map.
There are a few hiccups though. The camera lens is in the fish-eye style so the sides are distorted. That’s perfect for action-adventure videos where you want to see the action but it can be quite limited for other uses as it is quite uncomfortable to watch the video with the distortion.
As a gadget fan, I thought it would be quite simple to understand how to import the GPS log and footage but I was quite lost when it came to the TG-Tracker.
It would be good to have more detailed instructions on how to get a GPS log going with video footage and then transfer it to the smartphone. This is made worse by the fact that Olympus has two photography apps that work with this camera, complicating matters.
The S$588 TG-Tracker is the only camera right now that offers both video and still image capture and is able to track your route as well.
This is very close to being a perfect action camera. If only I can change the fish-eye lens out, or if Olympus would come up with a version with a regular lens instead.
