Red Eye Reduction – Digital Photography Tips

July 1, 2009

Red Eye is a common problem caused in compact digital cameras causing the pupils of a person to appear red, or if you are taking photos of your pets, makes the center of the eye appear red.

The problem occurs for a simple reason, as the light from the camera’s flash unit is reflected back from the retina of a your subject’s eye thus creating a direct hit back to the camera lens and causing ‘Re Eye’ effect in your photos.

It is also very common when using smaller cameras with a low range flash. In order to take better snaps and make your flash light reach the subject, you may tend to take photos from a short distance which makes this problem even worse.

How to avoid ‘Red Eye’

In order to avoid this problem try to take snaps from a distance, or use internal lighting when taking pictures indoors, if you are taking pictures outdoors and there are no light sources, sadly there is very little you can do to avoid this problem.

Another solution to this problem is to use cameras with ‘Red Eye’ reduction features which helps reduce this effect.

Humans or animals with bigger pupil can make this problem even severe, so bigger the pupil; more are the chances of getting a red eye in your snaps.

The flash unit in these cameras triggers twice, first with a small burst of light to reduce the size of pupils; of the subjects eye.

The disadvantage of using this features is the delay caused in shots which sometimes may blur the images making the subjects to believe the photo is already taken and they start to move away soon after the first small flash. It’s always a good idea to tell the subjects to wait a little longer for the second flash, when the photo is actually taken.

The best solution to avoid the ‘Red Eye’ problem is by using cameras with external flash units, which causes the light to disperse in to the environment and reduce the chances of getting a direct hit back from the subject’s eye.

Written by admin · Filed Under Digital Camera Buying Advice