Stephen, I also had a lot of trouble with this. I prefered to use AV mode, and could never get a decent decent shot with the built-in flash. I have done two things to alleviate this. I bought an 85mm 1.2L... just kidding, I wish I could.


1. I switched to manual mode. The camera reacts differently in Manual mode to AV mode. I forget why really, but a good explanation can be found here: http://super.nova.org/DPR/Canon/Links.html/


2. This one sounds silly, but, I increase the flash compensation to full, and then I use the back of my hand, placed directly in front of the flash, to bounce light onto the ceiling. You canalso use a small mirror, but I usually don't have the time to find mine when I need to take a picture and just use my hand. It adds a good amount of fill light to the scene, and I usually get sharper photos.


The previous reply is the right way to do it. My way is the cheap-works some of the time- method, but it fits my budget. I can try to post a photo using this method later tonight. It's not as bad as you might think.


Tom