[Peetle]

I'm pretty red-green colour blind. I grew up in the film era, and even worked in Kodak research labs for a while, so it's not held me back.

Basically I don't change colours in post, in case what looks fine to me looks weird to everyone else. I might adjust white balance - I always shoot in RAW - but other than that I tinker with curves, levels and so forth but I leave colour adjustments well alone.

[loyalt]

Up to 1-in-12 males and 1-in-200 females of European descent are colour blind. With those odds, there must be many colour blind people on Pentax Forums ... or are there?

If someone is colour blind, do they eschew photography? Or do they specialise in monochrome, or oversaturate to compensate? Or do they just go with whatever tone and colour rendition comes out of the camera, as that's the way they see the world anyway?

My father was red-green colour blind, but was a keen photographer when travelling (mostly colour slides), and even dabbled in B&W developing. His old Minolta SRT101 sits on my shelves as a reminder of him.

So it seems photography can be enjoyed by the colour blind, but how is their experience affected? If you or someone you know has this condition, can you comment? Are there any famous photographers or cinematographers?

My son is brown, green color challenged. He enjoys photography, and at his entry level use, it doesn't effect him much. He has very good eye-sight, so getting things in focus is not an issue. He has used my LR to edit just once and did a pretty good job with the colors.

... one pet hate is a battery charger I have. It has a single LED which is red when charging and green when charged. When I used it regularly I used to keep a red filter beside it to help me work out the colour of the LED when I checked it (light is red and dark is green).

Right! That one drives me nuts. I've taken to just leaving things like that on for the maximum amount of time that I think it could possibly take to do the complete charge, usually a day or so.

[Jim909]

Just a small point… use a white card to get white balance right and use a gray card to get exposure right. (But be mindful that some modern cameras don’t use 18% gray as the standard. )

---------- Post added 12-13-21 at 09:01 AM ----------

Another thought - red and green are easily distinguishable when viewed through a yellow filter. It seems that shooting with a yellow filter could make R&G shades easily distinguishable for composition while allowing for the removal of the yellow tint in post to restore color.

[photographic]

Yes i have red- green from my dad …
Shoot mostly monochrome 😀

[DamienW]

Right! That one drives me nuts. I've taken to just leaving things like that on for the maximum amount of time that I think it could possibly take to do the complete charge, usually a day or so.

YES!, This!! Why not just blue and red?! Red and green LEDs drive me crazy. Never thought to use a filter. I often just ask my family members.

[DamienW]

Yes i have red- green from my dad …

You would have it from your mum if you're male, and from both mum and dad if you're female (but mum may not necessarily have colour blindness, just the genetics for it).

[UncleVanya]

Another thought - red and green are easily distinguishable when viewed through a yellow filter. It seems that shooting with a yellow filter could make R&G shades easily distinguishable for composition while allowing for the removal of the yellow tint in post to restore color.

I’d like to see the results of the removal. I wouldn’t this would restore full color. Essentially the only color allowed through a yellow filter is yellow. The other color data would be lost. But during post processing the colorblind photographer might want to either apply a display profile or use glasses or a filter when making adjustments.

[Paul the Sunman]

Yes i have red- green from my dad …

Yes, the red-green colour blindness genes reside on the X chromosome. Females have XX, and if one is faulty, the other compensates, which is why colour blindness is much rarer in women.To exhibit colour blindness, a woman must have inherited a faulty X from EACH of her parents.

Males have XY, with the X coming from the mother and the Y from the father. So a faulty X can come only from a mother who has both her X chromosomes faulty (and is therefore colour blind herself), or only one (and is therefore a carrier but is not colour blind).

This is a very nice example of how genetics works to explain to children. Especially with a few diagrams, they get it straight away.

---------- Post added 15-12-21 at 11:05 AM ----------

It would be very interesting to know how the very rare women with tetrachromacy experience photographic images constructed under the trichromatic model. Having four types of cones rather than the usual three, they can normally see up to 100 million shades rather than the usual 1 million. Do photographic prints or on-screen images seem colour-poor to them?

[Jim909]

I’d like to see the results of the removal. I wouldn’t this would restore full color. Essentially the only color allowed through a yellow filter is yellow. The other color data would be lost. But during post processing the colorblind photographer might want to either apply a display profile or use glasses or a filter when making adjustments.

If I had a suitable yellow filter I would try it out, shoot my color card and see how white balance correction handled it.

If I had a suitable yellow filter I would try it out, shoot my color card and see how white balance correction handled it.

What's funny is that people come up with these solutions that bump up the magenta/red end of the spectrum, such as on the monitor I'm looking at now, whch has a setting they call "color weakness". It just looks ridiculous, and doesn't do anything to make it possible to see all the colors. As if one would want or need to do so.

I've found, though, in everyday looking around, that the amber-colored shooting glasses I use when I operate a chainsaw attenuates the blue end of the spectrum, which makes things sort of even - not monochromatic, it's more like turning up the contrast knob on a television set from 1970. That would tend to support @Jim909's suggestion.

The thing people don't seem to get is that colors of reflected light off of tangible objects (and pigment) is not the same as the colors of light that's generated from a light source. They have different primary colors, and are seen differently.

I just feel sorry for all those resolution-impaired people with normal color vision, who can't see their hands in front of their faces after dusk or before dawn.

[Serkevan]

I'm not quite sure that's what the average night vision looks like. Mine is *terrible* (because I have astigmatism and therefore any light source at night is a bother) and I still see significantly better than that. I used to go to the beach well beyond sunset all the time.

I'm not quite sure that's what the average night vision looks like. Mine is *terrible* (because I have astigmatism and therefore any light source at night is a bother) and I still see significantly better than that. I used to go to the beach well beyond sunset all the time.

Ah, well, that'll do it - nothing like an astigmatism to blur up your night vision - fortunately for me, mine's never been that bad. But like Chief Dan George's character in "Josey Wales" said, "I used to have powers. Now old age is creepin' up on me!" I find I can no longer see a path through the forest relying solely on starlight.

Interesting mention of the astigmatism, though - I had an opthamologist (past tense due to the fact that he left private practice to go teach at Johns Hopkins in Baldimo') who told me that the astigmatism is often coupled with red-green color blindness, because it's also an environmental adaptation designed to help long distance precision in spotting Bambi in the tall grass. He told me why, but now I can't remember all that.

[UncleVanya]

Interesting mention of the astigmatism, though - I had an opthamologist (past tense due to the fact that he left private practice to go teach at Johns Hopkins in Baldimo') who told me that the astigmatism is often coupled with red-green color blindness, because it's also an environmental adaptation designed to help long distance precision in spotting Bambi in the tall grass. He told me why, but now I can't remember all that.

My vision is bad without corrective lenses with a massive nearsightedness prescription and awful astigmatism. However my color perception is excellent. I’d be curious if there’s any scholarly data to support that opinion from that doc.

My vision is bad without corrective lenses with a massive nearsightedness prescription and awful astigmatism. However my color perception is excellent. I’d be curious if there’s any scholarly data to support that opinion from that doc.

I never asked him for citations to authority, but he is now teaching at one of the world's pre-eminent medical schools, so I'm guessing that he didn't just make it all up.

By the way, I understand that myopia gets worse with glasses and that contacts are preferable. Is that consistent with your experience?