PHOTO TALK
Prepared by the staff of Marshall’s Camera
Auburndale, Florida -A16
So are your pictures interesting or insipid? Truthful or deceptive? Memorable or soon forgotten? Who will be the judge?

QUESTION: I have two small children and we take a lot of pictures of them. The pictures taken outdoors look great but inside the house there are problems. In every picture where the children face the camera their eyes have a red appearance. We use the red eye reduction feature on the camera but it does not seem to make any difference. What can we do to make the eyes appear normal?
ANSWER: This is a common problem in photography. It has become more pronounced as cameras with built-in flashes have become smaller in size.
The light from the flash hits the face and reflects back to the camera to make the picture. If the angle made by the light going from the flash to the eyes and the reflection from the eyes to the lens is small and the pupil of the eyes are large then the red lining at the back of the eyeballs will show in the picture.
If reflected light from the back of the eyes is eliminated or reduced sufficiently then the red eye problem will go away. The red eye reduction feature on the camera attempts to deal with this by shining light on the eyes before the picture is made. This is an attempt to cause the pupil (opening in the front of the eye) to become small so that very little reflected light will escape from the eye. For some reason blonde haired, blue eyed children seem to be immune to this tactic.
The red eye reduction technique used by professional photographers is to increase the distance between the flash and the lens. This is one of the reasons that you will see a flash mounted on a bracket above or to the upper left of the camera at weddings, parties, etc.
Total elimination of red eye is accomplished by reflecting the flash light from the ceiling. This normally is done by using a flash with a head that rotates so that is can either point forward or point at the ceiling. Since no camera is made with a rotating head this technique requires the use of a camera that will accept an add-on flash. The rotating head flash, sometimes called a bounce flash, has to be of medium to large power so that light reflected from the ceiling will still be bright enough to properly illuminate the scene.
An additional bonus of using bounce flash is that the lighting appears more natural than direct flash. Direct flash tends give a poorly exposed picture if the main subjects are both close and far away from the camera. The close subject will be too brightly lit while the far away subject will appear to be too dark. Reflecting the flash

light from the ceiling reduces this lighting variation and creates a more pleasing picture.
So it is possible to totally eliminate red eyes in your pictures if you are willing to buy the necessary equipment. Or you could spend just a few dollars and buy a red eye elimination pen. Then, with a steady hand, you can color out the red eyes in the prints.
QUESTION: After many years of taking pictures the old fashioned way I decided to try out a digital camera. My head is still hurting from trying to understand the instruction book. One of the things discussed is something called “white balance.” Although I have studied a lot about photography this is a new term to me. After reading the instruction book I had more questions than answers about white balance. What is white balance and should I worry about it?
ANSWER: White balance is the term used to describe the way that the digital camera interprets the colors that it records when the picture is made. If the bulk of the light illuminating the scene is slightly reddish such as just after sunrise or just before sunset the camera recognizes this and will give colors that do not show this red cast when the picture is made. On most digital cameras the default setting for white balance is automatic. If you are like most photographers you will not need to worry about it. When the camera is turned on the white balance is set automatically for the conditions which surround the camera at that moment. In practical terms this means that the colors in the pictures will appear correct or correct enough to your eyes when viewed in the camera and also on the computer monitor. If fortune is smiling upon you the colors will also appear correct when printed out with your printer.
The reason that you may never have never seen the term white balance before is that color sensitivity is built into film when it is manufactured. The color sensitivity of film is sometimes referred to as the color balance of the film. General use color film is made so that the colors in the picture will look the most accurate when the picture is made in the middle of the day in direct sunlight. This color balance is fixed and cannot be changed. What can be changed is the coloration of the light affecting the film. Filters that do this are called color correction filters. One common example of needed color correction is when pictures are taken indoors under incandescent lights without the use of a flash. The pictures have a reddish cast. The processor attempts to correct for this but usually the pictures will appear too yellowish rather than too reddish. A blue correction filter will absorb much of the excess red light and give more pleasing pictures.
So you see the digital camera corrects for this type of problem before it has a chance to occur. White balance will discussed in more detail in another Photo Talk.
Copyright 2004 by Marshall Ledbetter