# red eye flashes **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 5, 2006, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152 "2006-11-05T03:48:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![caturday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a87d85/32.png) [@caturday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caturday)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/1 "2006-11-05T03:48:04Z")
A few moments ago I photographed my cat. My digital camera defaults to the anti-red eye flash setting for indoor shots. When I looked at the image, her eyes were still little pools of light. I took her picture again with the regular flash setting and there was no difference. Are the anti-red eye flash settings only functional for humans? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/2 "2006-11-05T04:04:21Z")
Red eye flashed work by flickering the flash a few times before the main flash goes with the shutter. The idea is that the first few flashes will make the pupil shrink thereby reducing the amount of red-eye. IME dogs (and cats I suppose) have rather large opening/pupils and it doesn’t work as well. Your best bet is one of three options. 1)Post process the image and manually remove the red-eye. 2)Get the flash far away from the camera\* 3)Adjust your camera settings and/or brighten up the room so you don’t have to use the flash. \*If you have an SLR camera, this is much easier. Assuming your flash it attached to the camera, you may have some luck with a piece of paper over the flash the deflects the light up against the ceiling. But doing that, _may_ cause the image to come out to dark. There are ways to adjust for that, but it’ll depend on your camera. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/3 "2006-11-05T04:21:13Z")
What **Joey P** said. For cameras with a hotshoe (usually SLRs, but I’ve seen some digicams with them), you’d either get a bounce flash that you could point at the cieling (or a wall, or whatever) so the light wouldn’t be going into the subject’s eye before coming back to the camera, or else use an off-camera flash (usually connected to the camera via some sort of cable) to flash from a different angle. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/4 "2006-11-05T04:28:33Z")
For a long and boring reason the pupil in one of my eyes is always very small - so in photos I tend to have one red eye and one not, which can look odder than two red eyes. The best way I found of dealing with it was to look at a lightbulb for a few seconds… though I suppose that’s not something that’ll help with a cat. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/5 "2006-11-05T04:57:56Z")
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold] For a long and boring reason the pupil in one of my eyes is always very small - so in photos I tend to have one red eye and one not, which can look odder than two red eyes. The best way I found of dealing with it was to look at a lightbulb for a few seconds… though I suppose that’s not something that’ll help with a cat. [/QUOTE] Yeah, all that’s gonna do for ya is leave a big bright afterspot in your field of vision, which will just make it harder for you to take a picture of your cat. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/6 "2006-11-05T15:42:48Z")
Even if the pupil of a cat does constrict, you still have the tapetum lucidum to deal with. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-eye-flashes/379152/7 "2006-11-05T16:54:42Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] Yeah, all that’s gonna do for ya is leave a big bright afterspot in your field of vision, which will just make it harder for you to take a picture of your cat. 😃 [/QUOTE] Well, if it was a particularly _ugly_ cat, it might help. 🙂 And now i’m going to flee before the MPSIMS-ers attack me for suggesting cats can be uncute.