Many digital cameras come built-in with a 'red eye-reduced flash' feature. This feature supposedly reduces red-eye inherent in peoples' and some animal's eyes when using flash to take a photo. It works by taking several quick flashes, getting your subject used to the light so their pupils don't dilate, causing the red eye effect.

Since red eye flash takes several quick flashes in succession, if you are taking photos of a fast moving subject, this feature will not work. Red eye-reduced flash naturally adds to the lag time between when you fully press the shutter speed down and when the photo is actually taken, so your subject may be long gone before the final flash is fired.

Thus, in these situations, if you do not have off-camera flash that can reduce red eye, you may wish to consider just taking the photo with this featured turned off and eliminating red eye later in software.

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