Every time you take a flash shot you have two exposures. One is the
direct exposure by the flash which is governed only by ISO and aperture.
Except for an FP mode (ala F280) the flash duration is too fast to be
controlled by shutter speed. The second exposure is via the ambient
light which is controlled by shutter speed in addition to aperture and ISO.
The fact that you're apparently only getting significant illumination by
flash (and little or nothing by ambient) says the shutter speed is too
fast to allow much ambient exposure. That's controlled by flash mode
and/or limits imposed on shutter speed used in flash setup.
Check the flash mode when in either Program or Aperture preferred mode
and be sure that one of the "slow" modes is selected. (red-eye/slow,
slow (1st curtain sync) or slow2 (2nd curtain sync). See page 108 in
the manual. The slow modes allow the camera to "drag the shutter", ie,
use a slow shutter speed to allow ambient light capture for the
background exposure.
Also check the flash setup area under tools menu F. This allows you to
restrict the max and min shutter speeds allowed when using flash. I
have them set at 1/250 and 1/4 second. The 1/4 second is fairly long.
The camera's IS system will probably deal with that OK from a camera
shake standpoint but will likely allow some blur from subject motion.
Since I don't use full auto I'm not sure what the camera does with flash
in full auto. Maybe the change you encountered was simply from changing
from Auto to A or P or vice-versa. If you're using full auto and having
a problem let me know and I'll investigate further.
Dr. Flash
On 10/3/2013 10:48 AM, Paul Braun wrote:
> I'm not sure if I changed a setting or something, but the last couple of
> times I tried using the FL-50 on the E-M5 it looks like it metered only on
> the subjects so they are too bright and isolated from a dark background.
> It used to do a nice balance where it acted more like fill-flash,
> especially in a room that was decently lit to start with. Now, it just
> lets the rest of the background go almost black.
>
> Ideas?
>
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