<p>According to the user's manual, the maximum synchronisation speed of the new Olympus OM-D E-M1 is 1/320th of a second when using the clip-on flash, and 1/250 sec when using a separately sold external ash unit. As we now have a review unit in hand, we can confirm that the latter is indeed true with an Olympus FL-36 flash attached - in TTL, Auto and Manual modes alike. (Of course, in "FP TTL" and "FP Manual" modes, the flash can be synced at any speed right up to the camera's top shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second - with the usual loss of working range this "trick" mode entails.) We do not have the entire Olympus flash line-up at our disposal to test if the 1/250s top sync speed holds true for all of them - but we have found something really interesting about using the camera with a third-party flash attached to the camera via the PC sync terminal or the hot-shoe*. Apparently, the E-M1's X-sync speed is faster than advertised! Click through / read on to find out more.</p><p>To test the behaviour of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with third-party speedlights, we hooked up an old Hanimex autothyristor flash via the camera's Prontor-Compur terminal, and took a series of shots at various shutter speeds.</p><p>We started at 1/320s and the flash worked flawlessly. Next, we moved on to 1/400s, expecting a partially black frame. To our surprise, we got a fully exposed frame instead:</p><p>This is already better than advertised, and excellent news for anyone planning to use external flashes with the Olympus OM-D E-M1. But now we wanted to find out what happened at 1/500s.</p><p><a href="http://www.photographyblog.com/news/syncing_a_flash_with_the_olympus_e_m1_at_1_500s/">Keep reading...</a></p>