I just got the Olympus D400 Zoom and I am having major problems with red eye and i have the flash set to the red eye mode. Is there a special attachment to diffuse the flash. I have tried not using it but in some cases it is necessary. Hope someone can offer some advice. Thanks Sandy McLaren

-- Sandy McLaren (donsandy@attcanada.net), July 04, 1999

Answers

I have heard of people taping a couple of layers of tracing paper over the flash for a diffuser. You could also add a slave flash to get the light source off axis compared to the camera lens.

-- Bob G (rgreg88721@hotmail.com), July 05, 1999.

You could always try using software correction. In Adobe PhotoDeluxe (I assume the program comes with your camera. It does with my Oly C2000), there's a red-eye correction feature. Just select the eye region, click a button, and you're done. Takes about 5 secon

-- Eric Tam (home@erictam.com), July 05, 1999.

Sandy, First let me mention that I am a working professional photographer and have been for more than twenty years, and hold the F.S.A. degree from the Florida Professional Photographers Association.. I mention this ONLY as a qualifier for the following opinion on the subject of "red eye" and red eye functions on cameras. To begin with, red eye is caused by the fact that your flash is located too close to your lens. When the flash fires, it bounces back into your lens at the same angle that it strikes your subject. When it is dark enough to use flash, your subjects eye's will have very large pupils, the black center of the human eye. The light from your flash enters into the pupil and bounces off the back of the eyeball which reflects as red. The lower the light, the larger the pupil. The lower the angle of flash, in relation to the lens, the greater the "red eye" problem. As a professional photographer when I use artificial lighting it is always at a higher angle to the subject than the lens. I can go into a long technical description, but lets just suffice it to say that the greater the angle of the flash, the better the results. Camera's that have a "red eye" function do not get rid of the annoyance, rather it reduces it. What happens is that the flash will pre-flash at a lower power, which should reduce the subjects pupil(Don't hate me for the mispelling) in his eyeball which in turn will make the "red eye" smaller than it would have been without the pre-flash. It's the same phenonemon as when you are driving a car at night and an animal gets into your headlights beam. The human eye reflects back as red(due to the light collecters at the back of the eyeball) and an animal's reflects back as green(same as above). With your camera, I know that you can not increase the flash's height above the lens. Therefore, if you want to get rid of "red eye", then use whatever imaging software that you use on the computer to retouch it out. Your camera cannot get rid of it, it can only reduce it with varying degree's of success. Kirk Kief http://www.kiefphoto.com kirk@kiefphoto.com kirk@gbso.net

-- Kirk Kief (kirk@gbso.net), July 05, 1999.