Red Eye Monster...

When the light is dim and the people are having fun, with a sudden flash, the monsters are revealed. These monsters only reveal themselves for that short period as they will not shoe you their true self when the flash is gone. You can only indentify them later in the pictures that you took.

I think that was a very familiar scenario for any person who has taken a picture under dim light with flash on. But why does that happen?

Have you ever shined light on a cat or dog at night? When that happens, their eyes will shine back with a white light. This is because they have a special layer, tapetum lucidum, in the epithelium of their retina. We human, however lack that special layer. And when flash hit us at night, you will capture the red color of the blood vessels that nourish our eyes.

How do you remove this annoying issue then?

First off, many digital cameras nowadays come with the red eye reduction feature. Try to pay some attention during the next time you take picture under dim light. You will notice that the flash will go off twice. The first flash is to make your pupil constrict to reduce the red eye effect and the second flash is to take the picture.

Next, is to get your flash further away from the camera lens. This can be a problem for compact digital camera as their flash is build near the lens. Since it is impossible to remove the flash device from these cameras, it is best that you include the red eye reduction feature when you want to buy a compact digital camera.

Then, you can bounce the flash to the ceiling. This don't just reduce the red eye effect at night, it can also help to reduce your subject being too white at day. This is easy for DSLR camera as most of the time its flash can be twist from front to back.

Lastly, when all else fails, you can remove those horrible red eyes pictures by editing your pictures with photo editing software. One good new is that the operating system nowadays are equip with basic photo editing software. Unless you want to do more editing on your pictures, you can save your money from getting a picture editing software.

Have fun photographing,

Michael Wong. :-)