My camera flashes F-- and wont take the picture

Sounds like a weak or old battery.

Savvyme123, did you figure out this problem? Crazy thing -- the same day that you posted this, my camera was doing the same thing. When in flash mode, the red light on the front of the camera is on, but it won't actually the picture. When the camera is on flash-off mode, it takes pictures without any problem.

The delay is caused by the flash charging. Put the camera in Program mode (P on your dial). This is similar to Auto, but you can turn off the flash. Press the button with the lightning bolt by it until you see the same icon but with a slash through it in your LCD screen.

Now keep in mind taking pictures this way will often result in blurry pictures because you're overiding both the Autofocus (by pushing all the way down on the shutter instead of first half way), and the flash (you may need to keep the camera extra steady in low light situations).

earlier i posted solution in similary problem. maybe help you this.

solution is good batteries, Ni-Mh or Lithium, rechargeable only not alkaline. but...problem is how long you watch pictures on lcd display or how much is flash in use. if always by shooting pics used flash that means that you can with best batteries 30, 20 or less pics shooted. and of course, if you connect camera with pc, how long is cam on? just transfer pics on pc and turn the camera off. the best solution is use the card reader for pics transfering.
if is flash off, it's possible to shot 120-150 pics with Ni-Mh. with lithium i don't know, maybe 500 pics. don't use camera lcd for analysing pics it's just there for short preview.
with alkaline batt., very low quality, i shot 30 pics without flash.

i shot also very good pics at night without flash. nikon coolpix L15 can do that but you must have more praxis. alkaline batteries shooting!
after 3 pictures on display is message: warning! the battery is exhausted. what you can do? turn the camera off. wait about 10 minutes. turn the camera on, you can shot 3 or 5 pictures and than turn your camera off again.
you can repeat this few times and you be lucky if you 30 pics captured:)
REMEMBER: all this goes without camera flash!!!
flash and every zooming use more battery power! and that was all magic:).

i have the same camera.i have the memory card in the camera,and it says the pics have been transfered to the card.when i try to download the pics to my pc it says the card is empty, no pics

i have a problem when i want to take a pic of my car at night the pics dont come out that good why is that.

well u have the flash system with a problem that can just be solved replacing the mainboard. therefore you can´t do much.

Use the right arrow button on the arrow pad. There is a little pic of a lighting bold beside a pic of a camera on the top left hand corner. Push the right arrow button and look at that lightning bolt you will see it changing. There are three different ones. One has a ling through it and that means no flash on had an "A" on it that stands for automatic and then you will see just a pic of the bolt without anything. Not to sure what means either. Hope this helps.

Same thing happened to me. Agreee with your conclusion. Hope someone can confirm, especially who/cost of repair. Thanks, tj

It is something that seems to be a problem with the Stylus 410s. Olympus will not repair them unless they are under warrenty, I've tried. My best advice, and what I am in the midst of myself (I have 2 of these with the same problem) is to file with the BBB. Perhaps if enough complaints come through, they will begin to fix the stylus 410 defect as they should. Good luck. =)