The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion

Red-Eye Reduction

If you've spent a lot of time shooting flash snapshots with a point-and-shoot camera, then you've probably seen red eye, that creepy phenomenon that causes your subject's eyes to glow red. The red glow is nothing more than the reflection of the flash's light off the back of the subject's irises. (Dogs' eyes, by comparison, reflect blue light.) While image-editing tools can remove this effect, it's often better to try to solve the problem while shooting to save editing time later.

The closer the flash is to the lens of a camera, the more likely it is that you'll get red eye, because the light from the flash can bounce straight off of your subject's eyes and back into the camera. Because the XS has a flash that sits a ways from the lens, the chance of red eye is far less than it is with a point-and-shoot. However, it still can happen, which is why the Rebel XS has a built-in red-eye reduction feature that can very effectively eliminate the effect.

To activate red-eye reduction, select the feature in the first shooting menu, and turn it on.

Figure 10-6. You can activate the built-in flash's red-eye reduction from the tools menu 1.

When red-eye reduction is activated, every time you half-press the shutter, the camera will activate the red-eye reduction lamp, the one that flashes when you use the self-timer. The idea is that the lamp will cause the irises in your subject's ...