My wife and I are thinking of getting a new DSLR camera in a few weeks. The current P&S cameras we own take good "pictures" overall. The problem we have is taking pictures of our cats and getting a huge reflection in the eyes. Trying to fix them in Elements does not work for us. The only way I know of is to change the eyes to black, which is not their true colors. Here is a picture my wife took recently:



I have seen pictures other users here took of their cats with beautiful natural color in the eyes and we want to be able to do the same thing. We went to Best Buy yesterday and were talking with the salesman between Nikon's and Canons. He was recommending the Canon hands down for what we want to do. We were leaning towards the XTi model. He was saying we should experiment with changing the white balance in the camera before we take the picture to correct the glaring eye problem. My question to owners of the XTi: do you agree with the salesman or would we need to make any other changes to settings in the camera before taking pictures of our cats, or would the standard settings on the XTi give us the normal cat eye colors? Of course another plus is being able to capture a picture when we press the shutter and not have to wait 3 seconds like we do now.

We then looked at the Circuit City website and noticed someone complaining about the exposure always being underexposed in the XTi, but everyone else said they loved the camera. Looking at Amazon we noticed the Pentax K10D looks like a good one. The weather proofing would be a nice feature. Also the image stabilization being built in to the camera instead of the lenses. Is this a better feature? Should we consider the Pentax or another camera over the Canon XTi? The salesman told us he recommends the Nikon to people who do portrait work

One thing I should also mention is that I own an older EOS Rebel 35mm film camera with 35-80 and 80-200 zoom lenses which I know "could" be used on the XTi but I am sure the stabilization would not be there.

Thank you for your help!

Charles, I posted an answer over on Elements Village.

Cheers,

Sounds like a good reason to avoid Best Buy - the salesperson is a complete idiot.

The white eye in your cats is caused by the flash and is the animal equivalent of red-eye. White balance will do nothing to change this, not ever. Canon/Nikon?Pentax, etc will all do the same thing.

You can try doing a red-eye setting on your camera (if it has it) to get a pre-flash, try bumpimg up the ISO and go flash free or try a bounce flash or flash diffuser to soften this.

Most cameras that have the flash poisitioned near the lens will produce the same result. - White-eye in animals. There are deflectors that will reduce this, but the best thing is a bounce flash which requires a removeable flash with bounce capability or a deflector - could be as simple as a white card in front of the flash at a 45 degree angle to send the direct light up to the ceiling.

Red eye in an animal, as already pointed out, is caused by flash. What I do to "fix" it take pictures in natural light so that there is no need for flash - and then I save those good eye pictures for later use. I'm working on converting a Photoshop tutorial to Elements on cloning eyes. If my jury stuff gets over in time I hope to have it ready in time to submit to Kim for next month's newsletter.

Thank you John anad Jane for your wisdom here. I am thinking now I will probably get the XTi with a hotshoe flash perhaps in a few weeks. That should help with the problem

If you wait until mid April the Cannon Rebel XSi will be out. I'm currently debating between that and the Nikon D60. (or a pro-sumer with CS3 software)

It may be April or even May before I make the plunge to a new DSLR. I saw the XSi on the Canon website, but I did not know if it was out yet or not, and what the selling price would be. I also noticed that the Battery Grip is NOT listed as an accessory. That was a tempting thing for me to put on my wish list for down the road. I see the XSi has an Optical Image Stabilizer. Does this mean the lenses will not have to have IS built into them?
The 12MP is not that important to me as 10MP is more than enough power for me to handle. Having a 3" LCD screen would be nice, but 2.5 is not a bad size either. Live View function would be a nice feature to have. But still, I thought the Battery Grip looked nice to add. Decisions Decisions!

What is a pro-sumer?????

A tip for learning how to angle the flash to avoid animal eye is to think of the eye as a mirror. The green glow is actually the light from the flash bouncing off the retina of the eye straight back into the lens. Angling the flash makes the light bounce away from the lens. Get a flash cord that connects the flash to the hot shoe(like an electronic leash) so you can practice how to angle the flash to avoid it.

Thanks Linda for the tip. I will have to wait until I get a DSLR to try it as my current 2 cameras are P&S. They do not have a hot shoe on them.

Pro-sumer camera's are also referred to as "SLR- like". That would be the higher end P&S that look like small DSLR's. They offer a lot of features including manual controls, a hotshoe, and some also offer shooting in RAW. Biggest difference is their lens is not removable and they have problems with shutter lag. The biggest benefit is the lens is not removable so no worries about dust getting in and you can pack a powerful telephoto around (12x or more = 400mm+) in a small amount of space. They also offer movie mode at 640x480 or higher resolution and DSLR's do not. Usually priced in the $500-700 range, although I've seen the Canon S5is for around $400 lately.

You can see a list of all the new camera's that were introduced so far this year and their release dates here:
http://www.popphoto.com/cameras/5096/ne ... -2008.html

Oddly Canon did not have an update to it's SLR-like S5is - while it's competitors did announce updates in the super zoom category. If they want to stay competitive they will have to produce something in the next few months. I am very interested in what they will come up with since XSi sports features from the higher end models. I'mguessing the S series will get some features from the Rebel line.