During the darker winter months, you will be making photos with your digitial camera under low-light conditions. Particularly the cheaper digital camera's have built in flashers with their limitations. While reading this, keep in mind that often the photo's whithout flash will look more natural. These pictures require you to hold your camera absolutely still for a longer period of time, and some digital processing afterwards. For family (action) pictures indoors you will need to use the flash.

No flash The first picture. I tried to take a picture of the Logitech USB-to-PS2 adapter. Obviously, it's way to dark in my room to see the bright green adapter, the white wall and my brown desk. So, I tell my trusty Canon PowerShot A20 to use it's flash (in auto mode).			Direct Flash That's a lot better. The automatic white balancing, automatic flash and autofocus of the Canon do their job well. The wall is white and the adapter is green, like it should be. Still, the picture has a rather "cold" feeling about it. Although it is an accurate representation, it's a bit to blue/gray, and the flash, which resides on the left side has created a hard shadow on the wall. The photo would look a lot nicer if it had a "warmer" feeling, and the shadow was a bit less hard.
Indirect Flash Yes, it's possible. Although the flash bulb is built-in, you can create an indirect flash by holding a folded piece of white paper in front of the flash bulb, so that the flash is directed upwards to the ceiling. In the picture on the right you can see how to hold the paper (red line) in front of the flash (blue F). One thing you will noticeis that if you listen closely, the flash makes a louder "pop" sound when you do this. The A20 actually flashes twice shortly after another. During the first flash, the camera calculates whitebalance, and how much flash is needed for the picture. During this measurement there is less light in the image because you are holding a piece of paper in front of the flash bulb. Because of this, the second flash will be much brighter, because the camera tries to compensate for the lack of light. The result is the nice picture on the left. A bit more yellow (because the other walls in my house are yellow and reflect the flash). The picture is a lot warmer now, and the shadow is softer.			Masking tape flash Another simple trick to get the picture warmer is to put yellow masking tape (you know the paper stuff) over the flash bulb. The shadows will be just as hard (slightly less if the tape is diffusing a lot), but the picture will be more "warm" (more yellow).