Red-eye is a phenomenon that occurs when light emanating from the built-in flash of a camera bounces off the subject’s retinas and reflects back to the camera. The problem here is that light just don’t come back hitting the subject’s surface, but instead reaches his blood vessels and retains a shade of it along the way, and this makes the eye look glowing red in the picture. An important point to remember is that Red-eye is not a problem restricted to a digital camera. Any camera with a built-in flash will encounter this problem one way or the other. As you can easily perceive, unless this peculiar problem is not solved at the bud it can make your entire photo in vain.

Here are a few tips that will help you to tackle this irritating menace:

While shooting indoors make it a point to properly light up the selected area. The principle of this arrangement is that in response to increase in brightness levels, our eyes will constrict a little, meaning that less flash light will be reflected back to the lens. This is also one of the main reasons of using flash in the daytime, i.e. to negate the possible red-eye effect. Most of the cameras adjust their flash output based on the ambient light and consequently brighter the setting, the weaker the flash needs to be.

In case you are shooting indoors during daylight it is imperative that you position the subject next to the window. This way you can take advantage of the additional light which will precisely do the same job as turning on additional room lights.

Another important thing to do is switch the flash to red-eye reduction mode. It is because in this mode the camera fires a brief, preflash light in advance of the main flash. It works on the same formula like turning on maximum lights- and the eyes constrict in response to the preflash. By the time the main flash is fired, the eyes are in the constricted position and subsequently releases less light from the retinas. Of course, many modern digital cameras, like the Fujifilm FinePix Z100, include an automatic red-eye reduction mode, which eliminates the red-eye effect. And if the red-eye reduction mode should fail, the user can always edit it later using photo editors like Photoshop.

Another way to negate the red-eye effect is by ensuring that the subject doesn’t look directly into the camera lens.