Page 157 - Friedman Archives

Red Eye Reduction 157

However, there IS another way,
based upon a biological trick that
actually works: Fire some low-
intensity flash bursts half a
second before the real flash takes
place. The human eye reacts
very fast to these; thinking
“OMG, there’s so much light
here!” and closes down the eye’s
iris almost immediately. A
smaller window to the eye means
a lesser opportunity for the red- Figure 5-22: The Dreaded red-eye! This
eye phenomenon to occur. So image was taken with a Sony DSC-T10
camera with the red-eye reduction
when this feature is enabled the feature turned off. (Ahhh… I simply must
camera’s pop-up flash will return to Mars someday!)
output two quick flashes, wait a
half-second, then put out a quick pre-flash and then take the final exposure
– four flashes in total, and about ¾ of a second in latency.

While this trick is certainly effective, it also promotes very stale, non-
genuine smiles when people are posing for you (plus it increases the shutter
lag tremendously). Not at all the kind of spirited expression I’ve been
trained since birth to capture. And so I always keep this feature off. If I
must shoot using the pop-up flash as the main source of light in a darkened
room (the worst kind of light imaginable), then I’d rather turn this feature
off and eliminate the red-eye on my computer.