Built in flash...

Do they have any real use, apart from snapshots?

fill flash outdoors, getting catchlights in dull lighting, can work alright for macro with something to diffuse the light, optical triggering of other strobes.

...

profit?

Um.... I used it once when I was messing about with friends and didn't take a flash... but they're really "just in case" devices for me.

it works just fine- especially when u dont wanna lug that 580 around or in a tight spot-

Brainstormer wrote in post #6251948
Do they have any real use, apart from snapshots?

I would rather my camera didn't even have a built-in flash. It's totally useless for me.

All of my lenses are either too fat or too long (some are both) to allow use the built-in flash on my 20D without projecting shadows onto the subject.

In addition, using a built-in flash is the perfect recipe for getting red-eye in photos of people or animals who may be looking in the direction of the camera.

I think I got ok fill at tokyo disneyland once. But recently it was useless as I needed a fast shutter speed on a bright day, and it doesn't support high speed sync. So its only good if you can get 1/250 outdoors for fill.

I'd actually like a stubby little external flash like the 220 (or even smaller) if it could handle HSS, as its more likely to be carried around with me just in case.

I have used mine once, and it resulted in a much better picture than a black frame, so yes, they do have their uses!

they do have their uses, i use mine as a trigger mostly as i don't have a hot shoe adapter for my stuido set up yet, you need to use slowwer shutter speed than you would normally to allow the other flashes to fire.

I use it for outdoor fill for portraits in harsh light or head and shoulder small group shots. Works well also when there is no light and you don't want to drag an external flash mounted on a camera, just-in-case. I've even gotten good flash only shots with it.

Red-eye, that's so easy to remove it's not a consideration.

I could never figure out how to fire the pop up flash without it first firing a pre-flash. The pre-flash all too often triggered my older optical slaves. I really didn't find the "digital" peanut slave triggers reliable enough to use. I did not consider this as a long term solution for firing optical slaves.

It does quite nicely in the role of fill flash. Gives enough pop to make a difference.

Kevin