On camera flash is super hard for most amateurs to master, so my advice is to try to take photos in places where you don’t need a flash. Until recently that meant mostly outdoor venues in daylight. Now with the Panasonic Lumix DMC LX5 you are no longer limited to the great outdoors for natural looking light. You can expect one reliably spectacular indoor low-light photo after another.
It able to do this because it has an amazingly “fast” lens. This basically means the lens lets a lot of light into the camera exposure “thingy” and does not have to compensate by adding a flash. Your subjects will look lovely with washes of natural light instead of a bright high contrast flash bulb.
It has a f/2.0 lenses, which lets in twice as much light as the typical f/2.8 lens you will find on most point and shoots. This wide aperture also mean that it is capable of producing a blurred-background effect that you see in many professional grade cameras. I also love the extra wide perspective (24mm) for fitting everybody in.
While this is a camera that many professional photographers will carry, it can be a great choice for an average consumer as well. You can use it right out of the box and can great results or customize it a bit to give you more manual control.