Viewing Conditions

[robertdfeinman]

The human eye can only see a full range of colors in bright light conditions. This has to do with the way the retinal rods and cones work.

Try this experiment: take a nice print of yours (preferably color) and look at it under normal room light. Now look at it in full sun. If it was "just right" indoors it will probably look washed out or have weak blacks in sunlight.

If you make your print to look best in bright light it will be too dark hanging on the wall.

Many museums and galleries think they must protect their holdings and show them under even weaker than normal light. This robs them of the effect that the artist had in mind.

I have track lighting spots pointed at the walls where I display prints, but it's still not bright enough to bring out all the depth of the prints. I don't have any solution to this problem, but I think that inadequate attention is given to presentation.

The situation with on-screen display is, of course, hopeless. Most TV's and PC's have the contrast and saturation turned up much too high and the color temperature is non-standard. I suppose that is why most people look at images online for their content and not their aesthetic quality.

With the trend towards movies being viewed on tiny screens we may see film makers giving up on producing high quality images. Why bother when only a tiny fraction of viewers will ever see a film in a theater anymore?

 

[payasam]

Robert, while I do not essentially disagree with you, I'll point out that the human eye has remarkable powers of accommodation. If even relatively dim light is of the correct colour temperature, the eye can see well in it. In addition, vision is controlled by the brain, so we see green, for example, where we know something to be green. I might add that when buying fabric or a garment other than black or white, I always try to look at it in natural light.