A reliable method of illuminating and imaging an eye through eyeglasses uses a monochromatic light source with the smallest possible source area, a camera with an imager that exhibits minimal blooming, and a narrow-bandwidth optical bandpass filter to filter out most of the ambient illumination while passing most of the light from the system's own illuminator. In an alternative embodiment, a partially-transparent mirror is used to make the light source appear to be on the optical axis of the camera as viewed from the subject's eye.