Issue with my digital camera & its flash

[evInce]

Hi everyone,

Long time lurker, first time poster!!!

What made me take the big leap?! Well, I've had a Dimage Xt for about a year now and it has worked amazingly up until about a month ago... The problem seems to be in the flash. When taking pictures (indoors or outdoors) I'd say 8 out of 10 times the picture turns out horrible.

Of those 8 bad pictures:

4 will turn out to be so dark you can't see a thing, and
4 will be so lit up by the flash that everyone appears to be a ghost. (everything is whited out).

Any suggestions/help/tips on what this could be and how I could fix it? It's very frustrating, especially this time of year when the family gets together and I want to capture it all in photos.

Thanks in advance,

evince

[another view]

One thing I've had a problem with on my Coolpix is the location of the flash sensor. It's very easy to cover it up with your hands when holding the camera. This may or may not be a problem with your camera - I couldn't find a big enough picture of it to see - but take a look and see if it might be a problem. Are there situations where it's always too bright or too dark?

[evInce]

There isn't a time when it would always be too bright or always too dark.

If I was to stand in the same place and take the same picture a number of times I would end up with both results and maybe eventually get a good result. (but imagine the frustration of having to take numerous shots in order to get a decent quality).

Not fun.