It’s pretty damn good, even though we can’t really measure it, and better than any digital camera. But maybe not for much longer.
8 thoughts on “The ISO Of The Human Eye”
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It’s pretty damn good, even though we can’t really measure it, and better than any digital camera. But maybe not for much longer.
Comments are closed.
I’m surprised that he didn’t discuss the limitations of the mediums used by photography too. The final product is an image on photographic paper. That introduces significant contrast and some color restrictions. The white and black of photographic paper is usually less, for example, than the contrast between a light in a room and what it illuminates.
Just remember that a camera is just one eye. So that also affects the final image. Also that the human eye has help from the brain that a camera can’t match yet.
“Astonishing!”
It’s pretty damn good, even though we can’t really measure it, and better than any digital camera.
Not according to the article:
“our maximum ISO is around 60,000…. the highest-ISO cameras (Like the Nikon D3S) can take photos at up to ISO 102,000.”
First-worlders don’t often experience the full dynamic range of human vision. For that, you need an hour and a half, away from all artificial light sources (even glowing embers in a campfire), on a moonless night.
Another factor that needs to be taken into account to make valid comparisons: At low light levels, the human eye functions solely in black and white while digital sensors retain (most of) their color sensitivity.
Indeed. ISTR reading years ago that if a camera of as poor quality as the human eye were offered to a professional photographer, he’d not only reject it, but refuse to do business with that company in the future.
It’s not that the eye is better than any camera, it’s that our minds are better than Photoshop.
Some of this misses an interesting point; the human eye is really several, very different film types sharing the same set of optics.
Black-and-white vision requires relatively short exposure, and is black and white (obviously), but can work at exceptionnally low light levels.
Our ‘main’ vision is narrow-angle, 3-color, moderate resolution and quite fast exposure. Accordingly, it requires relatively bright light. (Interestingly, birds have 4-color vision, and some human females have a limited form of this as well, ‘tetrachromacy’. As I understand it, such eyesight could distinguish a blue-green mix from pure cyan just as we poor 3-color vision types can distinguish a red-blue mix (magenta) from the average wavelength of that mix (green).)
Peripheral vision is wide-angle, color, and high-speed, but very low resolution.