Last year I bought the GF3, a dual kit which had the 14mm f2.5 along with the 14-42mm; then the Panasonic Leica Summilux showed itself to me and thence I bought my first fast lens. This year I bought an OMD and that is because I found out that the lack of an EVF and hotshoe mount is severely limiting… enter another fast lens, this time a manual one with twice the focal length of my first the – SMC Takumar but I find that even at f1.4 you cant really be shooting fast objects in the dark without bumping up the ISO and introducing noise into the image. The flash that comes with the OMD (FL-ML2) can only be fired straight and the most that you could do with it is to adjust the power output. And so a quick search and a few SMS correspondences later my setup now looks like this:
That is the Olympus FL36 mounted on the OMD with the 12-50 kit lens. Its unfortunate that the model isnt the 36R so I cant use it as a slave just yet (with a radio in the future it might work). I believe among the flashes available from Olympus that this is the most appropriate size for the system.
It runs on 2AA batteries, tilts, swivels, and has a built in diffuser which can be used for cutting off the power for close shots. It communicates well with the OMD thus can be operated fully automatic when mounted.
The interface is quite nice though I need to push a little deeper to turn it on. Might be Ill buy one of those lightsphere attachments to fully utilize it in an on-camera scenario which can be very useful when covering events during the evenings, otherwise all manner of bounce flash techniques can be used with the unit with enough power.
It is quite interesting that, while I’m more inclined to use available light before, the power to induce and direct shadow using a flash definitely adds a new dimension towards creating a photograph.
It becomes possible to see more and without blur because the subjects get frozen with the introduction of light. Photo above taken during Paktor’s app launch.