430ex and red eye reduction

[mindchatter]

Am I missing something or is there not a red eye function for the 430ex? I turned the function on in the 40D menu but it seems to only work with the onboard flash?
Thanks,
Jerry

[troypiggo]

Are you using the 430EX and still getting red-eye? Would have thought it is far enough away from lens to prevent it even mounted on-camera.

[tim]

There are two main ways to reduce red-eye:
- Use a flash bracket. This gets the light further from the lens, and means you don't get it so much. I don't like brackets.
- Bounce the light off the ceiling or a wall. I like this better. I rarely use direct flash as a main light.

If you can't do either of them fix it in photoshop. Not sure if you can do red eye reduction with a speedlite, but I know if you hit the button on the bottom left of the front of the camera (ie left hand when you're holding the camera to your eye) that can do something similar - DOF preview.

[mindchatter]

I was simply remarking that the 430ex menu had nothing reguarding red eye...But I think I'm clear on why now.... flash is to far from the lens so there shouldn't be any concern...thanks

[dcsmith40D]

I was simply remarking that the 430ex menu had nothing reguarding red eye...But I think I'm clear on why now.... flash is to far from the lens so there shouldn't be any concern...thanks

I did a search for red eye reduction because of a big problem I had with football pictures and my 580ex last night. I have Photoshop Elements 6 and I can't get it to correct the pictures. It doesn't recognize the red eye on several pictures. I've had Elements for a few months and so far I hate it. However, Canon's program DPP doesn't seem to have a fix at all.

[Curtis N]

A hotshoe mounted flash is far enough from the lens to prevent redeye at moderate distances, generally 15 feet or less.

In dark environments at greater distances, you'll need some method to get the flash further from the lens. Flash brackets and bouncing have been mentioned.

A common technique used by those who shoot nighttime football is to mount the flash on the monopod a few feet below the camera.

[KarlosDaJackal]

I did a search for red eye reduction because of a big problem I had with football pictures and my 580ex last night. I have Photoshop Elements 6 and I can't get it to correct the pictures. It doesn't recognize the red eye on several pictures. I've had Elements for a few months and so far I hate it. However, Canon's program DPP doesn't seem to have a fix at all.

I use gimp, its as simple as select the red part of the eye, and pick red-eye reduction from the menu, usually it does a perfect job.

Another alternative is googles picassa. Click red-eye, draw a box around the eye and it will automatically try and fix it, seems to work most of the time.

[dcsmith40D]

I use gimp, its as simple as select the red part of the eye, and pick red-eye reduction from the menu, usually it does a perfect job.

Another alternative is googles picassa. Click red-eye, draw a box around the eye and it will automatically try and fix it, seems to work most of the time.

I hadn't hear of either gimp or picassa; would you recommend one over the other? Would you use either instead of photoshop? As I struggle to make sense out of Elements, I think I wish Microsoft would come up with a windows based editing program. Using Adobe... seems reminiscent of using a DOS program. It is too cumbersome. I realize I'm showing my ignorance. Maybe photoshop is considered windows based. It doesn't seem to be very intuitive.

[KarlosDaJackal]

I hadn't hear of either gimp or picassa; would you recommend one over the other? Would you use either instead of photoshop? As I struggle to make sense out of Elements, I think I wish Microsoft would come up with a windows based editing program. Using Adobe... seems reminiscent of using a DOS program. It is too cumbersome. I realize I'm showing my ignorance. Maybe photoshop is considered windows based. It doesn't seem to be very intuitive.

GIMP is a open source (therefore free) viable alternative to Photoshop. Those who love photoshop hate its interface, those who love GIMP hate the photoshop interface. If you already don't like the Photoshop interface you have nothing to loose by try out the GIMP, it won't cost you a penny. Most photoshop tutorials translate quite well to GIMP also. Have a look on youtube and search for gimp tutorial to see the kind of thing it can do. It is a proper image manipulation application and it does have a learning curve like any other image manipulation application.

Picasa is a very basic tool that is intended for those who don't want to adjust things themselves in photoshop/gimp, its very basic regarding photo changes, it can only do basic actions, but it does them in a very simple to use way. Its great for those simple tasks but you will get tired of it as soon as you need to do something a bit more complex. This is one application where you defenetly don't need the instruction manual, its so easy.