Olympus E-M10 II Flash

Coverage and Range
A weak flash with narrow coverage. Above average positive exposure compensation required.

Coverage. Flash coverage is quite narrow and a little uneven vertically at wide angle, leaving the corners of our flash target image quite dark at 14mm, thought that's not unusual. Some of the corner shading can also attributable to the lens itself. We no longer test flash coverage at telephoto, as it is invariably better.

Exposure. Indoors under incandescent background lighting, the Olympus E-M10 II's flash underexposed our indoor portrait scene at ISO 200 and f/4, despite the +1.0 EV flash exposure compensation used. (An average of +0.7 EV is normally needed for this shot.) You'll likely need to boost ISO (or enable Auto ISO) for typical indoor shots. The camera's slow-sync flash mode was a little better but still somewhat dim at +1.0 EV even with the longer shutter time (1/15s vs 1/100s), and it didn't seem to respond to flash exposure compensation at all, producing the same brightness no matter how much flash exposure compensation we dialed in. Auto white balance worked well in normal flash mode but produced an image that is very warm and orange in slow-sync mode, because of the tungsten ambient lighting.

Manufacturer-Specified Flash Range Test. The Olympus E-M10 II's built-in flash has a Guide Number of 5.8m at ISO 100, or 8.2m at ISO 200. That works out to a range of 6.7 feet at ISO 200 and f/4. As you can see above, the E-M10 II produced a flash target that is underexposed by almost 1/2 EV, which means Olympus' flash rating is pretty optimistic.