Olympus E-M5 II Flash

Coverage, Exposure and Range
A somewhat weak flash with narrow and uneven coverage. Above average exposure compensation required.

Coverage. Flash coverage with the new Olympus FL-LM3 bundled flash is narrow and uneven at wide angle (12mm), leaving very dark corners in our flash coverage test image, though keep in mind 24mm-equivalent is wider than most kit lenses. We no longer test at full telephoto is coverage is invariably better, making wide angle the worst case.

Exposure. Indoors under incandescent background lighting, the Olympus E-M5 II's bundled flash produced a reasonably bright result from our indoor portrait scene at ISO 200 when +1.0 EV flash exposure compensation used. (An average of +0.7 EV is normally needed for this shot.) The camera's slow-sync flash mode required only +0.3 EV compensation to produce a reasonably bright shot (and higher values made no difference). Interestingly, the longer shutter time (1/13s vs 1/60s) did not result in the orange cast from the ambient background lighting we normally see even with Auto white balance.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. The Olympus FL-LM3 bundled flash has a Guide Number (GN) of 9 meters at ISO 100. That works out to about 7.5 feet at f/5.6 and ISO 200. In the shot above, the FL-LM3 did not quite perform to Olympus' GN spec in terms of range, producing a somewhat dim exposure at the calculated distance, aperture and ISO.