red lights on subject

So I was at a wedding recently. The photographer was using a Nikon (not sure that detail matters). Anyways, every time he took a photo the subject was lit with red lights in what appeared to be the pattern of focus points. Can anyone provide more details as to what the lights were and why one would want to use them? It was really distracting to see the bride's face lit up with red lights.

probably AF assist?

s1a1om wrote in post #17759981
So I was at a wedding recently. The photographer was using a Nikon (not sure that detail matters). Anyways, every time he took a photo the subject was lit with red lights in what appeared to be the pattern of focus points. Can anyone provide more details as to what the lights were and why one would want to use them? It was really distracting to see the bride's face lit up with red lights.

Heya,

It was autofocus assist beams from his flash or from a device in the hot-shoe that was designed for use with AF assit beams even if it's not a flash unit (like a transceiver that triggers flashes, but also has AF assist beams).

Very best,

Sounds like a focus assist beam from his flash. Most of my Canon's do a vertical pattern. My YN stuff does an intricate patter of short dashes. Standard fare.

Sounds plausible. Thanks. I haven't seen that used before.

Not sure about all but certainly some Nikon cameras have an AF assist built into the body which can be used in low light even without having a flash attached.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #17760221
Not sure about all but certainly some Nikon cameras have an AF assist built into the body which can be used in low light even without having a flash attached.

Yes and Canon do the same by strobing the built in flash, if the camera has one. This can be a very good reason to disable AF Assist, except for external units. It often isn't nice for the subject when the flash pops up and fires of a couple of second burst of AF assist flashes, even if they are relatively low power. It really surprised me when I got my first DSLR (300D) when it unexpectedly did that in low light. That was coming from an MF SLR (Pentax ME Super)

Alan

In low light AF assist is usually necessary, no matter what brand of camera/flash you use. My older Nikon D700 isn't great at focusing in low light without AF assist, but the newer ones are better. The camera knows when it needs AF assist and generally commands the flash to emit the beam as required.