A small advancement in photography

For the last year or so, I’ve been contemplating what my next stages in my pursuit of photographic excellence will look like. I’m not quite ready to take the route Terry was able to go, and Diana has been going for a while – I just can’t plunk down the $500-$1000 I’d need to get a decent DSLR rig, so I have to make do with what I have.
My primary camera is an Olympus C770, about as good a camera as you can get without going DSLR (well, it was when I bought it two years ago). I like the large lens area, optical 10x zoom, and expandability. I knew all along that one of the weaknesses in the small handheld cameras (and, in fact, with many DSLRs as well), is the built-in flash is too ‘hot’ for most low-light indoor photography. Subjects come out over-exposed and washed out. I knew this was going to be an issue, and one of the things that attracted me to the C770 was the inclusion of a ‘hot shoe’ – a mount point for an external electronic flash.
I finally found a combination flash, cable, and bracket mount on eBay and picked up the whole shebang last week. I was a little cautious because it seemed quite the overkill arrangement for such a small camera, but I’d also seen the great shots that had been done with a bounceflash on my father in laws Nikon 990 a few years ago. He had also accessorized the (then) rather small-lensed and small-bodied camera with a bracket and flash, and came up with quite nice pictures with proper lighting.
After assembling the whole thing and testing it out, I cast about looking for for a subject. Zach was lounging about playing on the Gamecube… ahh, a stationary target. It was night time, so the light was low, though Zach was sitting under a set of fairly ‘hot’ halogen lights, but I was able to take a good set of comparison pictures:

The left hand shot is using the internal flash built into the camera. It is ‘okay’, but suffers from the washed outtedness that derives from the small hot light source. The picture on the right is using the bounce flash against our white ceiling. There’s also a fairly good redeye system in the flash that I’m looking forward to experimenting with.
So far, I’m pretty happy with the results. The rig is a little bulky, but I’m fairly sure I can break it down into my camera bag. I’ll do more experimenting shortly. Onward!