pannumon
Veteran Member
Don't worry, this is normal, and many would claim this as an user error.I was doing a quick picture of our cat sitting under the Christmas tree, and I grabbed the G85 with the kit lens (Panasonic 12-60mm) lens attached. I had the lens hood mounted normally, and I noticed that was a shadow where the lens hood blocked the flash.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, reversing the lens hood for indoor shots fixed the problem, but would have thought the engineers would have made the flash high enough that the kit lens hood would not interfere.
The further the flash is from the lens/sensor, the more shadows the flash will cause to the recorded image. In general, it's better to have a small point-like flash (built-in flash) close to the lens/sensor. External flashes produce half-shadow (penumbra), that looks less distracting, even if the distance to the lens/sensor is larger.
I'm pretty sure that if you use 12mm and the smallest focusing distance, the lens itself will block the flashlight, just like the lens hood. It's very difficult to get completely rid of this problem. The engineers of course are trying to find the best compromise for this. Bouncing the flash is a good option, but usually that means external flash (you can do it with some rangefinder-style Panasonic cameras, though)