Originally posted by hjoseph7 Here are a couple of photos that I would have missed, or spent a gazillion hours in PP trying to fix if it wasn't for the pop-up flash on my K-5 II. I have hundreds of others...
Keep in mind that you can turn down the pop-up flash to -2 so that it is almost undetectable.
Sorry for being the one who tells you this directly, but none of the images you posted requires the pop-up flash or lots of time to edit them (if you wouldn't have used a flash).
For the second and for the latest image (the one with the horses and the one with the band), the pop-up flash didn't do anything to improve the images. On the band image which in my opinion is the keeper one from the 4 images you posted, the only thing that the pop-up flash did was to add even more light on the men's shirts making them stand out. It let the faces of the band members almost silhouettes. In those situations you just had to use exposure compensation to either make the entire band silhouettes, either to make the band stand out by overexposing 1 or 1.5 stops. In post you just had to bring down the highlights to add some details on the backlit area. Same on the image with the men on horses where you barely have only the first horse lighted but you lost details in both highlits and shadows areas and it's visible the lack of details in the sky, in the darker horse or in the bushes behind the men.
For the first and the third image the pop-up flash did exactly what a pop-up flash does, added a direct and harsh light. For the image with the woman walking I would have used a panning technique instead of a flash to avoid the harsh light on the subject, to avoid freezing and overexposing the snowflakes and to add some winter mood and motion to the image. Without the flash, I would have had also a background not as dark as you have mostly due to a lower ISO than the scene required.
And I say this because it's not an image where a low ISO would have been necessary. To be honest all the way, the flashlight from the phone would have been beter in the image with the woman walking. A 1/5s shutter speed combined with an f2.8 aperture, ISO not more than 8000 and the flashlight from the phone would have given you a completely different look than just a simple snapshot.
On the image with the bench, the flash it's visible and it makes the grass in the foreground to stand out first and then the bench.