I decided to go for it... it was pricey but hey, you only live once and I needed to see for myself what a remote flash would do for me. Olympus designed two new flash models to go with the new E-3 that allow "remote command" type flash control. You control the flash intensity from the camera, up to 3-4 flashes in three different groups (that's 9-12 flashes total). They sell the FL36R and the FL50R. The FL36R is pretty much the "remote flash version" of the small cute but takes a bit of time to recharge FL36 that I already have, and so with the FL50R respectively.
So after some serious thought, asking here and there decided to go for the FL50R. I am photographing a wedding this year, and I want to make sure I don't have to wait for the flash to recharge + I want the extra flash power.
It all works pretty good. Inside a house/studio it's easy to have the flash fire. Outside is a bit of a different story but you can get creative to achieve the same. Basically the flash needs to "see" the flash burts from the built in E-3 flash... which apparently has an encoded signal for the flash settings, as I have never seen the camera communicate optically with the flash when you set it (the link is purely optical, not wireless radio etc.). If you are outside you could bounce off some light from some paper so it reaches the flash, but onless you need to put the flash behind the subject outside, it will probably just work fine anyway.
Allright, some experiments... all are shots out of the camera. One is a self portrait-over exposed- on purpose.. I want to see if I can look smooth-pencil-drawn for a moment.... and as young and cute as a baby.
Decided to try the flash in a couple of situations tonight. It's all experimentation. The self portrait is over exposed, with the intent of doing so.
Comments/questions/critique welcome.
Yes, that's me as of a couple of hours ago! Now let's look at some nuclear blue berries in B&W:
And some "ratyraced" blue berries:
It's cool what you can do with overpowering the scene with light.
One caveat on the Olympus remote command system:
- I have had many situations inside though where the flash of the E-3 does affect the shot... trying to figure out under which situations it will kick in, in the shot and which it won't. Of course, if the main flash is set with a lot of power, it will over power the E-3's flash. Probably time to read that manual.
For the blue berry close shots this was an issue, and I ended up covering the built in E-3 flash with my hand.. which worked... !?! I am surprised now that I think about it that the "intensity command" still got through...
All shots are 100% out the camera jpegs except for the obvious resize. The color shots were done using MUTED mode, the other (first two) in B/W mode.