I have an issue using the built in flash on my EOS Rebel SL2, can you advise me?

Rookie Mike wrote:

I'm new to DSLR photography and recently acquired my EOS SL2. I love the camera and it takes great photos and video. My issue happens when I take still photos indoors with low lighting, usually of my granddaughter or other family, I usually just leave it in the automatic mode so I won't be constantly fiddling with the settings while entertaining or visiting.

This makes it hard for us to diagnose without an example image and EXIF data, though. If you don't know what was going on in the camera settings, we can't actually point out which one may be a culprit.

The built in flash deploys and flashes but the photos come out very dark.

This can happen for a lot of reasons. But your pop-up flash is very small and tiny and doesn't put out a lot of light. And light falls off over distance very rapidly. It pretty much won't light up a lot that's more than five or six feet in front of you, unless you're using a very high ISO setting and a wide aperture, particularly if you're shooting in low light.

Secondly, it can also be the exposure settings you were using.

Ambient exposure (the exposure from all the light that exists in the environment) is controlled by iso, aperture, and shutter speed. (Google: exposure triangle; or maybe read Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure).

Flash exposure (the exposure from the light of the flash) is controlled by iso, aperture, flash power, and subject-to-flash distance. ISO 100 and f/8 is a big ask of a tiny little pop-up flash (Google: balancing ambient vs. flash, or maybe read Neil van Neikerk's Tangents website's"Flash Photography Techniques",or Syl Arena's Lighting for Digital Photography).

I'm not sure if a setting has caused this issue or if the camera has a problem or if it's just "operator error". I've been unsuccessful in finding a resolution myself so I guess I'm asking if anyone has advice for me? Thanks.

Well, maybe start by swapping the green-box full Auto mode for the "P" programmable auto mode. That way, you can at least control the ISO and white balance settings on the camera the way you want. And try bumping your ISO up to 800 or 1600 when shooting indoors in low light, even with flash.

I would highly recommend that you try and get comfortable with the "creative zone" modes: P, Av, Tv, and M.  Being comfortable shooting in M is useful if you're shooting with flash, because it will let you balance the flash against the ambient however you want. The automated modes mostly assume fill flash, with P and Auto (and possibly Av, depending on how you've Flash sync. speed in Av mode set in the camera's flash control menus) switching to flash as main illumination in lower ambient light.

I'd also suggest you consider getting a hotshoe flash (aka "speedlight") to attach to the hotshoe of the camera. A pop-up flash is relatively limited in power, and even more limited in direction. Something like a US$110 Godox TT685-C has a head that twists around, so you can bounce the flash and not get that dead-white/flat look from direct flash.

And it also has built-in radio triggering, so if you get ambitious and decide to learn off-camera studio-style lighting, you can do that, too.