![]() The effect is still more pronounced in humans and animals with albinism. The role of melanin in red-eye effect is demonstrated in animals with heterochromia: only the blue eye displays the effect. Photographs taken with infrared light through night vision devices always show very bright pupils because, in the dark, the pupils are fully dilated and the infrared light is not absorbed by any ocular pigment. This is obvious because the red-eye effect is most apparent when photographing dark-adapted subjects, hence with fully dilated pupils. The color of the iris itself is of virtually no importance for the red-eye effect. Light-skinned people with blue eyes have relatively low melanin in the fundus and thus show a much stronger red-eye effect than dark-skinned people with brown eyes. This amount varies strongly between individuals. The amount of red light emerging from the pupil depends on the amount of melanin in the layers behind the retina. But blood is the main determinant of the red color, because it is completely transparent at long wavelengths and abruptly starts absorbing at 600 nm. Melanin, located in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and the choroid, shows a gradually increasing absorption towards the short wavelengths. The lens cuts off deep blue and violet light, below 430 nm (depending on age), and macular pigment absorbs between 400 and 500 nm, but this pigment is located exclusively in the tiny fovea. The eye contains several photostable pigments that all absorb in the short wavelength region, and hence contribute somewhat to the red eye effect. The blood in the retinal circulation is far less than in the choroid, and plays virtually no role. The main cause of the red color is the ample amount of blood in the choroid which nourishes the back of the eye and is behind the retina. In flash photography the light of the flash occurs too fast for the pupil to close, so much of the very bright light from the flash passes into the eye through the pupil, reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball and out through the pupil. This odd-eyed cat displays red-eye effect of its tapetum lucidum only in its blue eye
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