How do I avoid red-eye in my pictures?

Red eye only happens when the flash and the lens are quite close, and the room is rather dim, and the subject is looking at the the camera. (or quite close to it.)

That's because what you are seeing is the picture of your flashgun projected on th eback of the subjects eye, reflected back out along the line of sight to the rough vicinity of the flashgun.

If you elminate one of these factors you will reduce red-eye.

One option is to employ a pre-flash, that is an extra flash before the main flash.

This is built-in to some cameras as an anti-red-eye measure, others simply use a very intense light on the front of the camera.

The idea is to deliberately dazzle your victim (Sorry, subject. ) and cause their pupils to contract just before the main flash. That reduces the amout of light getting into their eye and illuminating the retina brightly enough to be seen.

If this is not provided by the camera you have, you culd try to dazzle the subject yourself, with a separate flash or similar!

However, you could try getting the subject to look just to one side of the camera at the right moment. (Hence 'watch the birdie') This will still look like the subject is looking at the camera, but will reduce the red-eye effect at least a bit.

The favourite method is moving the flash away fro the camera. That not only reduces red-eye but adds 'modelling' to the image. (Shadows, that is. Not young ladies in unlikely garments.)