Flash photography tip: Prevent red eyes

Sunday 4 December 2022, 13:13 by Elja Trum | 3,415 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

When you photograph a person straight on with your camera's flash switched on, there is a chance your subject will get red eyes.

Red eyes are caused by the flash light reflecting off your eyeball. The red colour comes from the blood flowing through your choroid (which lies behind the retina).

Yana-Meau - f/6.3, 1/160s, 100 ISO @ 140mm
There are a few solutions for red eyes. You can use your camera's red-eye reduction function. When taking a photo, it then gives a pre-flash, making your subject's pupils smaller. As a result, much less light is reflected in the eye during the actual flash.

You can also easily make red eyes black in post-processing. Many software packages even have a standard function for this.

Prevention is better than cure, however. So use an on-camera flash and bounce the flash.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about Photofacts

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