"RED EYE" help???????

[tegdig]

I take a lot of photos, but I am a real novice. I still use a 35mm point and shoot camera. I picked up photos yesterday and half of them are so disappointingly bad with such red eye! They are of my 6 month old granddaughter and the pictures are so wonderful, but she looks like a scary Halloween character! They are not that orangy-glow red eye that happens occasionally, they are red, like solidly colored in by a red marking pen! Is it me, is it the camera, is it the processing??????? I get a lot of my film developed at my local Walgreens one hour photo....I have had problems there sometimes with the photos not being true to the negatives....top of head cut off, etc. My camera has a zoom on it and I do take some pretty close up shots, is this my problem....Like I said, I love to take photos, but really just point and shoot. I would appreciate any suggestions, remember I am quite the novice. Thanks!

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

I don't think it's anything that you're doing wrong, or the processing or anything like that. It's just a combination of the camera and children that causes a lot of red eye. On point and shoot cameras, and many SLR's with built in flashes, the flash is too close to the lens, so the reflection of the flash bounces off the back of the eyes right back to the lens. Children are especially prone to red eye because their pupils naturally enlarge faster in lower light than adults, and children, especially babies, have less pigment in their iris and retina, which in adults, would help absorb some of the light from the flash. (On a side note, that's why babies are born with blue eyes, and then they later change color as more melanin is deposited in the irises.) Since your granddaughter is just 6 months, I'm guessing that's the reason for the severe red eye.

So - what can you do? If your camera has a red-eye flash setting try that. That will give a pre-flash that causes the pupils to constrict a bit, reducing red eye. Not always successful with kids/babies, though. Also try turning on all the lights in the room which might help close the pupils a bit. You could also try diffusing the flash a bit. Try taping a piece of a kleenex tissue over the flash to soften the flashes output, which can help reduce the red eye.

As for the prints you already have, you can buy a red eye pen from your local camera shop. Or online if you can't find one locally. Then you basically color in the pupils on the prints, covering up the red eye.

 

[extreme8]

It's not you, and it's not Walgreens. It's the camera.
The problem with any camera that has built in flash is that the flash tube has to be so close to the lens axis that red eye is all but inevitable.
Even higher end cameras with accessory flashes can have this issue to some extent. The ideal fix is to separate the flash from the camera as much as is possible by using a flash bracket or some other method, but that isn't practical for a point & shoot.
Some cameras have a red-eye reduction setting that fires multiple flashes to minimize red-eye, but I find that a nuisance, and minimally effective at best.

Your only solutions are to either ;
A. shoot with more light in the room (closes down the pupil), but if you could do that you wouldn't need a flash in the first place.
B. Try and get shots of your subjects when they're not looking directly at the camera. If you're the flash doesn't bounce off of the back of the eye you won't get the red eye problems.

Once upon a time I found a retouching pen - not much more than a watered down magic marker actually - that worked great on prints. It took just seconds to color in the red eye and it improved the shots by tremendously.

 

[wenrob]

Try the scrapbook section at Walmart or Michaels to find a red eye pen. Just use a light touch.

 

[MHolleman]

Since these are already printed you can only use a special pen found in the scrapbooking section at a craft store. Most cameras have red eye reduction setting on them. Mine will flash one and then again to reduce the red eye effect. I would suggest buying a digital camera so that next time you can edit them in software before having them printed. Good luck.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

Since these are already printed you can only use a special pen found in the scrapbooking section at a craft store. Most cameras have red eye reduction setting on them. Mine will flash one and then again to reduce the red eye effect. I would suggest buying a digital camera so that next time you can edit them in software before having them printed. Good luck.

This gave me another thought. Along with getting the film developed into prints, have them digitize your pictures and put them on a CD for you. Then you can correct the red-eye on your computer as suggested above. Once done, you can take the corrected files back to Walgreen's and have them reprinted from the digital files. Or, if you don't have a computer (or not sure how to do it) you can take the CD to Walgreen's and stick it in the Kodak Picture Maker machine and correct the red eye and reprint right there.

 

[tegdig]

Thanks for all of your expertise!!! I really appreciate it......