Reflection in eye help needed

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I'm trying to take a macro shot of my eye, and I'm having trouble with glare from the edges of my eyelids reflecting onto my irises. I'm already opening my eye as wide as I can (without holding it open with my fingers). I'm not sure what I need to do to eliminate these reflections, since I can't keep the light from hitting that part of my eye.</p>

<p>Sorry my eyes are so bloodshot; it's from me trying over and over again to get rid of the reflections, and holding my eye open for too long.</p>

<p>Please note, I'm not talking about the catchlight.</p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure what I need to do to eliminate these reflections, since I can't keep the light from hitting that part of my eye.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Photoshop them out. It is a lighting issue (angle of incidence = angle of reflection), if you can't control the lighting, you can't fix a lighting issue. Ideally, you would want to get the light source outside the family of angles.</p>

<p>Well, I don't have the Photoshop skills to remove them...I wouldn't know how to do something like that.</p>

<p>As far as moving the light out of the family of angles, how would I do that? All I can think of is that I'd have to light the top and bottom of my eye separately to keep light from hitting the edge of my eyelid and reflecting into the camera...the top half lit from the top and the bottom half lit from the bottom, and somehow flagged to keep the lights from spilling onto the "wrong" half.</p>

<p>Light bounces off of reflective things like a mirror. To keep the reflection from hitting the camera lens, you need to change WHERE the light is coming from and where you put the camera so the bouncing light doesn't end up in the shot. Also, the BIGGER the light source, the less distinct the reflection will be. So, in this case, you may need to use a light that fills the eye rather than the point source that your flash creates.</p>

<p>Shooting a reflective sphere is really not easy, even knowing this stuff. If you really want to get deep into lighting things, you need to read, " Light: Science and Magic " and learn all about the family of angles and much more. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>I actually just finished reading Light: Science and Magic. Of course, I can't memorize it in one reading, and I couldn't see how this was exactly (or closely) covered. The sphere example seemed too different. Using a large light source should help; I didn't consider that. I tried moving the flash closer to make the light source larger, but the catchlight became huge. A softbox or two may help a lot. Thanks for the suggestion!</p>

<p>I was thinking an eyeball would react like the metal sphere example. I'm no lighting guy, for sure, that after reading it, not long ago, that's how I would approach the subject. That and lots of Visine.</p>

I can see the tannish pink arch reflection of your eyelid on the top of your iris that you would want to avoid. It is akin to, "I am trying to take a photo of my grandmother's silver teapot but I keep getting a reflection on the teapot of a cup that is two inches off to the side of the teapot." The answer to that would be to remove the cup or shoot from a different angle. You can't remove your eyelid and you want to shoot straight on. There seems to be less reflection on the bottom of the iris from the bottom eyelid. Maybe rolling your eye up a bit more would help.

<p>I suspect the "glare" is actually the tears forming a meniscus up to the eyelid. I agree that Photoshop (or GIMP if you want to save money) and the clone tool would be the simplest fix; a big area light source (bounce the light off a wall behind the camera) may be an imperfect alternative. I really don't think it's distracting, Last time I did a shot like this, I left reflections alone - it was clearing all the stray make-up from the eyelid that was the worry...</p>