BetterPhoto Q&A
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Lighting and Red Eye

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November 05, 2000

There are three parts in your question, red-eye, color temperature of your lighting, and lamp placement.

Red-eye:
Yours is a very common problem for cameras with built-in integral flash units. Yes, it is a refleciton from the blood in all the capillaries in the retina. The solution may be to put an external flash on the hot shoe, one that stands up a few inches. This will not guarantee eliminating it, but should greatly reduce the risk of it. It seems that the pupils in small children tend to be wider than older children and adults. Risk of red-eye always increases as ambient light goes down and pupils open up. It's a very real problem at dimly lit receptions in combination with alcohol consumption (which also dilates the pupils some).

Color Temperature:
Tungsten lighting (which is what your floodlights are) is not the same as daylight. These are bulbs with tungsten filaments, the same as your standard household 60 Watt light bulb. The differences are measured in what is called "color temperature." Tungsten lamps are "warmer" than daylight meaning there is more red and yellow, and very little blue by comparison. This is why your photos have a yellow tint to them. You could try using tungsten balanced film, and there are several professional films for this. Among them is Kodak's Portra 100T, an ISO 100 portrait film, and Fuji's 160(T) NPL. Both are balanced for tungsten light. Your results might vary with this as tungsten film is designed for use with tungsten photo lamps. The color temperature in them is more tightly controlled than the floodlights you are using. It will still be much closer than daylight balanced film and easier for your print processor to balance color when making prints. Kodak also makes tungsten balanced slide films: EPY-64, EPT-160 and EPJ-320. If you use tungsten balanced film, *don't* use the flash! Use only the flood lights. The flash is daylight balanced and just as the floods turned daylight film yellowish, a flash will turn tungsten film bluish. I don't recommend filtering using an 80A filter. It is a very dark blue, hard to focus through, hard to compose through, and you will lose two stops of light with it.

Lamp placement is an art. In general they should be above your camera level by about a foot or so. This can vary with your camera height and subject height, but never below the camera height (unless you want some real special effects)! The idea is to get deep shadows to fall down behind the subject where the camera will not see them. Beyond that, you can work with all manner of placement. One method is to use them equally on your left and right by several feet, just behind you. Another is to place one (out of the frame) to the side of the subject and another behind you as before on the other side. Even with dual lamps, you still may see two shadows, one on each side. Even with floods, you may still see sharp edges to the shadows, as they are direct lighting and not diffused. You can try bouncing the light from the stronger one off of the ceiling onto the subject and filling in shadows with the weaker one. However, if your ceiling isn't white (or nearly white) it will pick up a color cast of the ceiling color.

Be careful with the floods. The wattages you are using generate a lot of heat. There are special floodlamps for growing plants that are close to daylight balance. I don't recommend them. They get much, much hotter than a normal flood of equal wattage, and can only be used in ceramic sockets that will not melt or burn (NOT plastic or bakelite). They are not made for photo use and your results could vary wildly with them.

-- John

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November 06, 2000