# Reflection of a dog's eyes



## augman0000 (Dec 25, 2006)

Hello everyone I am new here. I just got a 6.0 megapixel digital camera with 5x zoom and I have a question about a photo I took.

I took picture of a living room scene and my dog was in the picture as well. When I downloaded the picture onto my computer, I noticed that his eyes were white, yes white. They were not red so I am wondering why this is happening and how can I correct this because of course, white is the not the color of his eyes.

With the "white" eyes: 







With the normal color:






Thanks in advance for the help.


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## becmaclean (Dec 25, 2006)

Most animal eyes have a tapetum, human eyes do not. The tapetum is a reflective structure that lies beneath the retina. It acts like a mirror; reflecting light back through the retina so the retina gets more opportunities to capture light. Animals that are active at night have a tapetum. Dogs, Cats, Horses, and Cows all have tapetums. It causes the yellow or green glow you see when light hits an animal's eyes

In laymen terms, your room was too dark and flash too bright. The flash bounced off his tapetem, causing a glow. In the future, try to bounce light off something other than shooting straight at him.


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## augman0000 (Dec 25, 2006)

Oh, ok thank you. I did not know this.

So what I need to do is to take the flash off so that there is not that birght reflection of his tapetums?


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## The_Traveler (Dec 26, 2006)

Or point the flash at the ceiling so that the light doesn't reflect directly off his eye.

In order to keep the forum speedy, please reduce your images so that the maximim size is 800 pixels along the longest edge. Thesoftware that came with your camera should help you to do this.


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## xfloggingkylex (Dec 27, 2006)

think of it as the animal form of red eye.  bouncing the flash or moving the source of the flash away from the lens so that it isn't direct into the eyes will help to reduce/eliminate it.


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## Nurd (Dec 27, 2006)

Since they have answered your question, I thought I'd just comment on your beautiful Sheltie. We also have one. Very nice dogs. Ours LOVES getting her picture taken.


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## druzilla (Dec 28, 2006)

thats interesting stuff


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## ironsidephoto (Dec 29, 2006)

biiiig pictures.


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