Understanding Red Eye #
October 25th, 2008 | In Worth Knowing
There’s nothing too complex to it, but I’d never actually heard the story before.
When you took the picture, the camera flash sent a lot of light into the eye in a very short time, the light reflected off the back of the eye and out through the pupil and, because the camera lens is close to the flash and able to capture images very quickly, it caught the light reflecting back out.
So why is that light red? Because the fundus, the interior surface of the eye that includes the retina, is loaded with melanin, a pigment that gives it a brownish-reddish color.