Sony A5000 Flash

Coverage and Range
A weak flash with very narrow and uneven coverage at wide angle. Our standard indoor portrait shot required more than average exposure compensation and still came out dim.

Coverage. Flash coverage is very narrow and uneven at wide angle (16mm), leaving very dark corners in our flash coverage test image. Coverage at full telephoto is of course much more even (though quite dim at ISO 200 here.)

Exposure. Our Indoor Portrait test scene came out dim with +1.0 EV flash exposure compensation at ISO 200, and flash exposure compensation didn't make much difference except +1.0 EV was oddly a bit dimmer than +0.7 EV, so +0.7 EV is shown above. The average amount of flash exposure compensation required for this scene is +0.7 EV, thus the A5000's built-in flash performed below average here, and there's no hot shoe to connect a more powerful flash. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode produced very bright results with no flash exposure compensation, though with a strong orange cast from the ambient room lighting.

ISO 200 Range. With the 16-50mm kit lens, flash exposures started out bright at 6 feet at wide-angle but brightness fell off from there. At full telephoto, flash exposures started out dim at 6 feet and decreased in brightness from then on.

Manufacturer Specified Flash Test. The Sony A5000's built-in flash is rated with a Guide Number of 4 meters or 13.1 feet at ISO 100. At ISO 200, that works out to about 5.4 feet at f/3.5 and 3.3 feet at f/5.6, the maximum apertures of the kit zoom lens at wide angle and full telephoto. In the test shots above taken at the aforementioned distances and settings, the A5000's flash produced bright flash exposures, which confirms Sony's rather weak flash power rating is at least credible.

Our standard test method for flash range uses a fixed setting of ISO 200, to provide a fair basis of comparison between cameras. We also shoot two shots using the manufacturer-specified camera settings, at the range the company claims for the camera, to assess the validity of the specific claims.