[ElephantsMyAnus]

It is different because it is obvious that shadows are darker than in reality while highlights are much brighter than in reality.

Any brain filtering would have to affect the photos as well, even if it was true.

No common image format uses linear response. It would explain this problem if cameras treat them as linear.

Maybe they should just make the cameras take physically correct colors, instead of relying on people, as the typical person will always choose extreme contrast that will make the camera unusable. (and can be easily increased in editing)

[dagmx]

What is "brain filtering" and why would you think either film or digital can reproduce the same visual effect as our eyes see?

Our brain does a perceptual aggregation of multiple frames and inputs. This is not how cameras work.

Also "make cameras take physically correct colors" is impossible unless you're talking about spectral capture, which is orders if magnitudes more complex. If you're using just RGB photosites AND RGB displays, there is no such thing as physically correct colors. Everything will just be a mapping at best, with the best that color science experts can actually provide.

[ElephantsMyAnus]

The one I was replying to talked about brain processing. Whatever it is doesn't need to and shouldn't be reproduced in photography as the protograph gets processed just like everything else when you look at it.

Reality --> eye --> "brain filter"

Reality --> photo --> eye -> "brain filter"

Cameras should only record the colors as accurately as possible. Or if you want to nitpick again, so that the photo stimulates the eye receptors identically to whatever was captured.

[lmm]

It's physically impossible for a photo to send the same photons into the eye as the original scene did - imagine taking a photo outdoors in sunlight and then viewing that photo indoors, the whitest possible parts of the photo will be literally orders of magnitude darker than the original scene. Similarly you can't reproduce the same colours because you don't have all of the colours available (e.g. there's no way a computer screen using RGB pixels can reproduce the precise wavelength that a sodium lamp gives out). Trying to reproduce the experience of viewing the original scene is the best we can do, and that requires not just physics but biology and psychology. You talk about "eye receptors", but the line where the eye ends and the brain begins is actually very fuzzy - ontogenically your eyes are part of your brain, and the signals passing from eyes to brain are already in a "compressed form" where e.g. a straight line is represented by a single nerve impulse.

[unfocussed_mike]

This explains really well several things I was struggling to explain.

And also introduced me to the word "ontogenically". Thanks twice.

[dagmx]

they already do that to the best of our abilities.

Color is incredibly complex. It's easy to say "we should capture it as accurately as possible" but I don't think you fully comprehend the high complexity involved.

Your concept of matching eye receptors is wrong too. Color is perceptual and subjective. Your perception of color is based on your upbringing, your genetics, your environment, your own mental faculties, your mental state etc... What is accurate? Your eyes see some spectral energy, your rods and cones convert those to signals, your brain then adds that into an aggregate set of information that it's constantly infilling and, most importantly, guessing about.

You can't guarantee that multiple people see color the same.

Now even if a camera could hypothetically capture an image accurately to the real world (IMHO only possible with a hypothetical full spectrum sensor), how would you store it? The second you convert it to RGB data it needs a perceptual conversion to the bit depth of the data format. Now even if you have a file format that can efficiently represent this, you'd also need full spectrum displays so that we could beam that exact color to your retinas.

Color science is incredibly complex. You're trying to trivialize it into matching your own narrow perception of color.

[unfocussed_mike]

If you have never done this before, I absolutely recommend -- while it is still possible to do this in a practical way -- getting a cheap film camera, getting hold of a proper incident light meter (like a Sekonic L-208 or L-308), and shooting some Fuji Velvia 50 or Provia 100F. Or if you can find it, some modern Ektachrome.

For example you might want to go to a beach or a park and shoot throughout the day on a bright day. Put people or objects in the foreground and then shoot them with either the light behind you or in front. Use the incident metering dome to meter the light

(you'll need to look this up, but the broad point of it is you stand in the same light as your subject and point the meter into the light, rather than at your subject)

Once you see what transparency film does in high-contrast situations I think you'll better understand what I'm trying to get across.

[nyanpasu64]

I don't think shadows are darker than in reality, but instead don't have their detail captured, or get swamped out by high black levels on screens or glare in the viewing environment. Also highlights get clipped at a much lower level than in reality (photographs of suns aren't eye-searing unlike the real thing).

[LocalH]

> Any brain filtering would have to affect the photos as well, even if it was true.

Not when the dynamic range of reality is much greater than that of photographs, and your visual system is one of the best visual processors in existence. It’s like reducing a 24-bit image to 16-bit - the image is “good enough” to identify the subject, but it is quite lossy. Photography itself is a lossy process.