For some reason I decided to try to take a picture of my eye.

Eeeeek

You know, the thing about a suicidal lemming... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The space turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces.

^^First thing I thought about when I saw it :)
...
Its staring into my soul!

Wait... Incandescent bulbs, you sick earth hating bastard :^P

That's right, and I'll be hating it till the day I die!

This is why the internet is scary: The first thing Spidey and I did was to look for other information in the image, such as the unshaded incandescent bulb, the mullioned window, the shape of the flash.

On the bright side, in ten years when biometrics are commonplace, we won't have to resort to bringing your severed head to the ATM.

You're a wierd dude, Lemming.

Oh, and ++ to Shadoen for the perfect comeback for that. I laughed.

Either the image of the eye has been flipped on its horizontal axis or the glare of the bulb has been flipped when reflecting off of the pupil. The reason I say this is because there is a slight line going across the bulb indicating a pull string.

Hmm, I had assumed that line was part of the "harp" that normally supports the shade of a table lamp.

I didn't know the human retina looks like this, up close.

And the image does not have to be flipped, really, since the eye is convex and thus should show an inverted image, so I give my vote for Surbius' second statement. The flash of the camera is on the 'wrong' side of the divider line (I'd say) because it is much closer than the light bulb, but perhaps someone more proficient in optics could shed more light on this? /me nudges Shape

You can't see the retina in this photo - the retina is in the back of the eye and is most often seen as "red eye". Here you see the conjunctiva/sclera, the iris, and the pupil.

You've made an assumption about the location of the flash that I'm not certain is true.

I think Lemming is enjoying this thread.

Canon Digital Rebel XT...

Nice camera :)

Btw Whistler, the "red eye" is actually the fundus.

True, I mixed up retina with iris. My bad.

Whistler is right, the vertical line on the bulb is the support for the shade. From my point of view, the camera flash is to the left and the bulb to the right. Only thing I did to the image taken by the camera is crop it and scale it.

Edit: Messed up the sides the light sources were from...

Vindicated about the lamp! messed with the photo a bit, couldn't get much more than the narrow shaft of the lamp and perhaps a small round surface beneath it.

The term fundus describes the surface of the inner eye, including the retina. While there is some thought that the red color of the red-eye effect comes from the pigment of the fundus, it is the retina that does the reflecting of the light to the camera lens. In order for the red-eye effect to work, the flash needs to be on the same plane as the lens so that the light will hit the retina and reflect directly back toward the lens. If the fundus were doing the reflecting then red-eye would be seen from offset angles, not to mention the havoc it might play on vision.

You may have seen this bit in Wikipedia: "The fact that the reflected light is red often is attributed to the ample blood supply of the retina and/or chorium, but this is incorrect.[citation needed] The red-eye effect is due to the color of the fundus, which is due to melanin, a pigment, principally located in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE)." This refers to the color of the light, not the reflection.

/edit: I discussed this with an ophthalmologist the other day. He agreed.