http://www.technewsdaily.com/dangerous-infrared-light-leaks-from-cheap-green-laser-pointers-1036/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063342/Airline-pilots-blinded-laser-beams-come-land.html

I don’t suppose we’re going to know much about that either for a while as I don’t think these things are tested on eyes…. not even as the lights get stronger and faster. Usually infrared is used to focus in low light settings only? The infrared beam is narrow, but I had heard something about those little laser lights (what type of light are they?) being cited as dangerous even to pilots. Pilots have been flash blinded by those and I heard that they can cause permanent damage to vision?

Just a few more kids needing glasses on the planet than would otherwise be the case and adults needing their scripted lenses adjusting every few years is enough incentive to feed people inaccurate information when the average optometrist doesn’t study different types of light, power of light and which types are damaging sadly. Unlike your average dentist warning you about sweets and lollies being bad for your teeth and talking prevention, the average optometrist or opthalmologist doesn’t really care it seems enough to “prevent’ eye sight deterioration.

No study has yet been done to either disprove or prove it and since that is the case, I would not even trust to what your optometrist has said. But if you research the words “Flash Blindness” you will come across more information about that and in fact in most cases flash blindness is not permanent, it can cause permanent damage. I’d say that is all to do with how powerful the UV or IR light was (both of which come from flash), and how close it is to the subject.

Your average point and shoot decides the camera settings. In low light situations, it will use more powerful amounts of flash. The flash head has UV filter protection but if and when that degrades (as can be possible in some of the powerful flash heads by just popping it off continuously for more than 20 times without a break) and once that flash head degrades, the UV or IR light from the flash head can be at it’s most damaging.

Most people consulting this article will not be using the more powerful flash, but I would still use caution. In my case I had injury to my cornea, but in a small baby, I guess the type of light that damaged my eye can get to the retina’s and cause permanent damage and much worse. As a photographer I never expected to go into a class on flash and come out with worse vision than when I went in. No customer having a portrait taken does either and from a newborn or babies perspective, it is simply not worth a pretty picture with flash in my opinion.

2001

Right Eye = -0.75/-0.75×95 – Left Eye = -0.25/-0.50×62

Up to 2008 when I had my accident with the strobe I did not need to get my glasses script amended. I may have mentioned above that I had blurred vision from day two after flash accident, but my sight became less blurred over the next day or so. However, it did not recover to the above as my script was in 2001. My left eye lost -0.25 diopters to myopia (whereas my right uninjured eye was the same). I developed -0.50 diopters of astigmatism in the left eye which means I see things double at distances, or and extra lines around edges or edges are no longer sharp at distance. My right eye (always the one to be more short sighted, deteriorate more and need corrective lenses) only developed -0.25 diopters of astigmatism.

In fact when looking through my 2001 scripted lenses at distant objects, I can see the discrepancy in the left lens as distant objects do not seem as sharp in the left eye as they do in the right eye with glasses on AND off.

Neither the optician or the opthamologist felt it was a convincing enough deterioration for it to be taken seriously unfortunately. My argument there is this is just “one’ accident or incident with a flash, and several more and I guess you could say I’d wind up legally blind!

I still have a permanent black spot approx the size of a pin head in my left central vision which can be seen when i look at white flat surfaces. It never moves and is in the same location that the blurred patch was day following the accident and the same place the burned yellow rectangle was for 30 minutes following one flash from the flash head. There is more information at the link below in more detail about the accident and visuals to demonstrate what I saw in my left eye and how my eye sight was the few days following. By no means normal following a photo portrait session with a photographer. Any client would be very angry I suspect having this occur for them. Despite the optician and opthomologist not taking my accident seriously you’ll note that at 2001, it was deemed important enough to treat my left eye for -0.25 diopters of myopia! But neither of them feel a drop in -0.25 diopters for myopia or a drop in -0.50 diopters of astimatism in an otherwise good eye is a big deal! Better yet, this is my dominant eye and the one that I shoot with and look through the view finder on my DSLR, and whereas I could get away with wearing glasses before the accident at times only having -0.25 diopters of astigmatism, I now need to wear glasses due to having -0.75 diopters of astigmatism.

I hardly wore my glasses unless driving at night to see road signage clearly prior to the accident and that is part and parcel as to why I never had lens script changes. as the more you use your eye’s and the less you use your glasses, the less deterioration there is. Technically as I was using my left eye a lot for shooting and working, it should have actually had less deterioration than the right eye as per normal for me. However, this did not occur as you can see. I wanted to come back and update this thread and my suggestion is that if your using taking portraits of babies, always better to get natural light on the subject than use flash. If you have to use flash, I recommend filtering it with white tissue (if your amateur) if your taking a close up portrait. The flash I am referring to is very powerful, and pro photographers use this. I am unaware of the power of some of the flashes on the point and shoot cameras, but you may like to not expose your baby to too much flash as technically it is UV light at the end of the day and UV light (whether it is artificial or natural) is the most damaging. In fact, too much sun over the long term has been proven to cause macular degeneration, and I see no difference between that and frequent exposure to flash on a regular basis close up right now.

I have deleted the post on my blog, but updated the issue here on my facebook page for anyone wanting to have more details of the difficulties I am now having with getting my injury taken seriously by optometrist and optician.

http://www.facebook.com/valeriejefferiesphotography?v=wall&ref=ts#!/notes/valerie-jefferies-photography/eye-injury-local-health-care-is-not-good-enough-palmerston-north/163104450388696