I recall at the beginning of these sessions, that Zahra (teacher) had told us about the evils of using the in-built flash. It is designed for the novice, and is the brightest of all known lights. It strips your exposure bare, washes out the colour, and gives anything with eyes that 'rabbit trapped in headlights' expression. Not to mention the fact that on my lily skin it overexposes to the point that the sensor on the camera recognizes my skin as dead pixels (ie. no colour at all). We had been told to use low shutter speeds and wide aperture to compensate for darkness, and not to forget that we could also use higher ISO (although I find that anything over 400 makes my exposures unacceptably grainy. I have been told that this can be artistically pleasing, but I don't think I have the knack yet).
However today, Zahra ran us through the functionality of the flash, JUST in case we were caught in the dark with no tripod.