S45-Red-Eye Problems

[hotscher]

I just bought a Powershot S45 several days ago and I am very disappointed as most of my pictures have the "red-eye problem". Of course I have activated the corresponding feature in the camera in order to avoid the red eyes.
I am really desperated - can somebody tell me if that is comon in digital photographing or is it typical for the S45 or does just my modell has that problem?
Hope somebody can help me!

[Cumba]

I had the same problem but discovered it was only really bad when I took close-up shots. So try this - when you want a close-up shot, stand back and use the zoom to get in close. Experiment a bit to find the best range. I think you'll find that any shots taken out towards the maximum range of the flash will be okay regardless.

Hope this helps

[Benny Tong]

Yes, this is common for digital cameras and you can solve it in several ways:

1) Turn on the red eye reduction control and get your subject to look into the camera so the camera reduction may work better.
2) Choose a subject with a darker eyes so that their eyes reflect less light (this has been observed a lot of photographers)
3) Buy a decent phot editing software and edit the red-eye out.
4) Buy a $17 external slave flash (I got one myself) and use the internal flash to trigger that. Held in high and as far as possible away from the camera. All red eyes will disppear as the flash will not be reflected into the lenses of the camera. The picture will look better too as the external flash will lit out a wider area.

I use method 4 and I have no red eye problem since then.


Regards,

Benny

[PhilL]

Yup! Red eyes are a big problem of the S45, but also to some extent of any other very small camera from Canon, Pentax, Sony, Olympus, etc. The problem lies in the fact that the flash is almost on the same axis as the lens, which means that the light emitted by the flash bounces off the retina of the subject, and comes straight out, carrying that nice blood-vessel hue.

The thing that the S45 doesn't have, though, is a strong and aggressive pre-flash to close the iris. Rather, it relies on the AF assist beam to do that, but the beam is not strong or wide enough. This explain why the S45 is a bit worse than other sub-compacts.

An idea I've been toying with but haven't yet tried is to half-press the shutter a bit longer to shine more the AF assist light in the eye of the subject. Maybe that'll help.

[TBonez]

Benny, what external flash are you using? The only one I came across was over $175.00. Way too much for me.

Thank you,

TBonez

[Benny Tong]

Opps should have been a US$27 flash. It is Starblitz 200M which has a DN of 20M/ISO100.

Benny