EVEN WITH A FLASH THE PICTURES ARE DARK

Chuck it away, and buy a Pentax. I've had nothing but problems with my A350. Appalling piece of kit where batteries can go 2minutes after replacing them. Disgraceful shoddy kit.

Hello Lullee,

the culprit is in the flash (electronic) section. Replacement of the module or repair on a component level can be done in Authorized Panasonic Service.

Best regards,
Arpad

I had the exact same problem and decided that rather than throw it away which would be second.... I took the back off to see if there was anything i could do.
What happened was my cats knocked it over one day and you will see inside there is a battery that is right below the circuits for the two buttoms that control flash and picture. I gave it a little push tighter up to the circuits (they weren't making proper contact) and then after a successful trial shot, put it back together and it is working perfectly. It's amazing to think that a forced movement inside of this device will completely set it off. And I can't even imagine how much money I saved. Knowing full well we don't often get 100% honesty when taking a device in to be fixed. :)

In the menu under the the 2nd option, you can adjust flash settings. Under flash control, I switched to the pre-flashttl option and was able to take pictures with the flash after having the same problem.