I'm going to call fake on it. I've shot a lot of cameras, point and shoots included, and if anything point and shoot flashes are the easiest to spot:

- Extreme brightness and blown highlights.

- Very flat image due to the fact that the flash is in-line with axis of lens, very few shadows, and what shadows you see is very hard.

That picture is very, very much an ambient light picture - there would be the tell-tale "zombie" skin tone from a point and shoot at that range, and the people would be lit up like lanterns, washing the relatively dark background into unrecognizability.

It would take a skilled photographer with an off-camera flash to pull off that shot without destroying the background, no way that was done with an ordinary point and shoot.

When you are outside at any distance from the target, particularly if it's dusky out (which it appears to be in this picture), the flash does jack-all except for reflect off shiny things like eyes. That's just from my personal experience, having taken photos under similar circumstances and not being able to tell from the photo that there was a flash, even though I saw it go off.

Really? It seems kind of implausible that they'd bother to fake the EXIF data.

It could just be a camera with a crappy little flash that isn't showing up very much (it is outdoors, after all).

If you're going to fake a wolf photo, why not fake the EXIF?

It seems odd to both fake the glowing eyes and edit the EXIF. Why not just give the wolf normal eyes? And why reduce the credibility of the fake by claiming that the flash went off in a photo with no visible flash effects? I just can't see how faking the EXIF is at all plausible in this case.

edit: From a reddit comment:

> Notice the focal length. The camera was set to its maximum zoom, and probably has an underpowered flash. Other than specular reflections off a piece of plastic (purse?) under the woman's arm and from the creature's eyes, there wouldn't be any visible effect from the flash.

That’s what I thought, too.

So we can at least be pretty certain that the EXIF data was faked :)