The awesomeness of the Pen-F flash

OlegDulin wrote:

As I pointed out in another thread, I've moved from GX7 to Pen-F. I hated the built-in flash on the GX7 -- it was offset, too harsh, and casted nasty shadows. GX7 also wasn't particularly good with the hotshoe flash -- colors were off, white balance was off.

At least the GX7 HAS a built-in flash. Being offset is actually an advantage, in that you can shoot the camera vertically or horizontally and the flash will still be above the lens if you're holding the camera correctly. It casts nasty shadows because it's a point light source; that's a physics issue and not a problem with the camera, and will be indistinguishable from any undiffused, shoe-mounted light pointed straight forward, on any camera.

I have Pocket Wizards and Softlighters for eliminating those shadows when needed, but for what it is, the built in flash of the GX7 is fine. Also, I've only ever used it or the FL360L or the FL580L and I've never had issues with white balance or color with any of them.

Boy, am I happy with the Pen-F. With the Pen-F I am back to the "Olympus colors" I so missed since I gave up my E-620 in exchange for the GH2. Look at the perfect colors and skin tones here.

Bounce flash off the ceiling

This doesn't look any different from bouncing a flash off the ceiling using a Panasonic (or any camera, for that matter), except you'd have to crank it to Vivid on a Panasonic to overcook colors this badly. If your subject has a flushed face (from drink, rosacea, or whatever) and you're not going to bother tungsten-balancing for the background and gelling your flash to match, then you might have gotten a better result toning down the saturation in this particular case.

I'm not slamming the Pen F, I'm sure it's a fine camera. But saying that not having a built-in flash is somehow better than having one is nonsensical, and these cameras, like most enthusiast-level cameras, offer enough controls that if you can be bothered to make use of them instead of shooting full-auto smartphone style in factory default mode, then it's not difficult to make the final results very similar to indistinguishable.