A few months ago I saw a post on Reddit singing the praises of the Olympus FL-LM3 clip-on flash and I thought what the hell, why not. I bought one second hand from Wex for the princely sum of £38 in “excellent” condition. And you know what, it really is great.
Smaller and easier
I already owned a flash, an old Metz AF-1. The Metz is significantly more powerful but it’s also rather large. It’s a bit unwieldy on the S5 II and completely impractical on the OM-5. The LM3 is small enough you can leave it attached for a time without being annoying, and it’s not hard to slip into a camera bag.
With the OM-5 you really need to use the Metz off-camera with a remote trigger which is more faff. And there’s the batteries… it needs four AA by itself, the radio receiver takes two AAA and there’s a coin cell in the radio transmitter. It’s a lot of stuff to keep all charged and ready. The LM3, taking it’s power from the camera, needs none of that.
Whilst less powerful than the Metz, the LM3 is still good enough for normal in-room use. Even when ceiling/wall bouncing the ISO values remain in the acceptable region. Just don’t expect to overpower the sun with it.
Because it can twist and tilt you get a lot more options than front-firing integrated flashes or the smaller external ones by Godox etc. The below examples were all taken in a dimly lit room at 19mm F4, SOOC.
Cheaper and better
With low-light photography the temptation is to start thinking “I need a bigger sensor” or “I need a faster lens” when really what you need is a flash, and it’s much cheaper. Obviously, in some situations (e.g. gigs) you can’t use flash, but normal social photography you can.
Big sensor/fast lens combinations don’t just increase light gathering, they also narrow DOF. Even you have full-frame & F1.2 glass it’s not much use for people sitting round a table as too much will be out of focus and you’ll want F8 equivalent anyway.
This makes the FM3 a great pairing for the 14-45/4 lens. By itself F4 on MFT isn’t really practical for indoors photography, but with the LM3 it is, and it’s the aperture you’d want to use anyway. There’s even enough power to drop to F5.6 even to really flatten things out.
The stupid bit
This is all very nice, except OM systems dropped support for the LM3 in the mk2 version of the OM-5. This makes an already underwhelming camera actively worse than the one it replaced. But hey, I’m sure saving 2c of wire to the hot-shoe was worth it on a £1000 camera. Even if an eventual mk3 is better in the ways it needs to be better, I’d be reluctant to upgrade because this flash is now an important part of what makes the OM-5 useful versus using my S5 II for things.
The really unexpected bit
Also via Reddit, I recently saw a comment that the LM3 works on Panasonic. My first thought was “don’t be stupid, clip-on flashes don’t work that way”. But it really does, at least on models that include the gold 4th pin which includes the S5 II. It requires some minor surgery to file down the plastic lip at the front of the LM3 mount but otherwise it’s a go-er. And although the Metz is less ridiculous on the S5 II I think I’ll prefer the LM3 most of the time.
Which leads to an interesting thought for the future. The G9 didn’t include the required power-pin, but the G9 II does, the L10 does and the GH7 does. I’m assuming Panasonic have selfish motivations, e.g. powering their XLR interfaces. If there’s a “GX10” and it also has support it would strengthen the idea of that being the natural upgrade for the OM-5 rather than another OM camera. I think that’s ironic.
Just get one
If you have a compatible camera and you ever take photos indoors, you should get one of these. It’s got to be the best pocket-money upgrade you can make.