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by orbital-decay 1277 days ago
>It's because paper doesn't EMIT light; it only reflects it.

What's the difference? I've seen it repeated over and over and it never made any sense. If your screen is too bright compared to the environment, turn it down. The only practical difference seems to be uniformity - screens are much more uniform. No shadows, no dependency on the angle to the light source etc. Which is... great?
2 comments
quesera 1277 days ago
The first things that springs to my mind is that the spectrum of emitted light from an active display is different from that of reflected sunlight/artificial light off of paper made from pulp/linen/cotton.

Active displays can be fatiguing for a variety of reasons, including brightness as you mention, but also the "unnatural" light spectrum.

Also, of course, blue light is believed to affect your circadian rhythm, so can cause disturbances after sundown. Most ebook readers have adjustments for this though.

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BuckyBeaver 1273 days ago
It's a good question. One thing is that the brightness of the page will always be appropriate for the ambient light, since it is determined by that light.

Beyond that, I'd speculate that screens don't retain as much contrast when you turn their brightness down, compared to physical materials presenting similar "brightness" under ambient light. But really that's just some talking out the ass with no research to back it up.

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