Tony Crake
At a U3A meeting, on the topic of light and colour in art, one of the members said that she used to see colour differently with each eye. She’d noticed years ago that when she was looking at a rose in her garden and winking, it appeared a slightly different colour between one eye and the other. That had apparently been the case until a couple of years ago when she had an operation to remove cataracts, and her colour vision has since been the same for both eyes.
This led me to wonder whether anyone else had experienced anything like this, did it only concern one shade or hue, and what, if any, difference it had made to your everyday work/circumstances. My own query relating to this is: if she noticed the difference over 30 years before she had her cataracts ‘repaired’, could it be an early indicator of the presence of cataracts? Because I am assuming that the underlying cause of the colour difference was some form of desaturation caused by a slight milkiness in the eye.
Pat Heigham
I have had both eyes’ cataracts removed and replaced with new plastic lenses. The first one was done three years ago, and when comparing the colour perception of each eye, it was noticeable that the repaired eye was subjectively ‘bluer/whiter’ than the other eye which seemed much yellower by comparison. I put this down to ageing, rather than the effect of the cataract, which had more of an impact on sharpness.
Having had the second eye done last year, it made a huge improvement to my sight .
I was worried about the ability to continue driving, but a check using the reading chart surprised the clinic, as I could read two lines better than 20/20 vision!
A further complication revealed an epiretinal membrane in the earlier eye operated on. This is a slow deterioration and affects the central focus zone, but doesn’t seem to have any effect on colour perception.
I recall being tested at TVC with the Ishihara colour charts – this was well before the advent of colour TV.
It would not surprise me if a person’s two eyes actually differ with regard to the receptors.
Chris Eames
As someone who, like Tony, worked on PSC with a very blue mono viewfinder, I was very aware that, after a while with my right eye in the viewfinder, there was a significant difference in the colour perception of each eye. The right eye acquired a yellow cast, and my left eye moved towards the blue. When we eventually were allowed to have a colour monitor it made me realise how difficult it was to maintain an accurate colour balance. Hence the need for colour correction in post production.
We all watch colour TV’s, balanced if I remember correctly at 6500K, and are perfectly happy with that. Do you remember the trouble that we had in studios with in-shot TV in the early days of colour? The cameras, balanced at 2950K made them look blue, they needed to be specially modified so that they could be re- balanced to look normal. Our eyes/ brain cope with it, the camera cannot.
I have had considerable problems with my right eye. I developed an infection, (toxoplasmosis) in my right eye, which destroyed a significant part of my retina. The treatment produced very rapid cataract development, which was cured by the usual operation. The nearest thing to medical magic there is! The advice I have had from Moorfields has been consistent. Stop comparing eyes, they can never be the same, your brain will make the best use of what information you have. After all, the output from you eye is an inverted, distorted image. The brain does the rest.
I have followed this advice, and it works, I only notice the problems with my vision when I think about it, as I do now, writing about it!
Ian Hillson
"… Our eyes/ brain cope with it, the camera cannot… "
That’s because the eye is an outgrowth of the brain – sadly, at school we were all taught in Physics that the eye is like a camera, when really this very loose comparison should really be the other way round… the camera is (a little bit) like the eye in that it had a lens (focussing differently though) which focuses light onto something sensitive. After that it’s more complicated as to how the brain interprets things.
Over ten years ago I went to get a new prescription of reading glasses for holiday reading. The left lens worked perfectly but the right was problematic. Going back to the opticians afterwards they looked again and told me that I’d had a burst blood vessel in the right eye and referred me to Kingston Hospital who said not to worry as it had happened a few years earlier (spookily corresponding to a time of raised blood pressure when working on CBBC!). They gave me a bit of graph paper and said "come back again when it gets worse" – the problem manifests itself as a slight bump in some horizontal lines viewed with the right eye.
My new (private) optometrist said "it’s a wonder you didn’t go blind" when she examined it last year! Glad I didn’t know that at the time.
Monitors: Over the past ten years or so we’ve had in-shot displays which had switch-able colour temperature, so things are improving.
The same problem occurs using "scans" and other waggly lights on studio shows which use discharge lamps balanced to daylight – the gel in them gives a very acidic yellow colour in studios with the cameras balanced to 2950K… rebalance camera to daylight and the yellow is a lovely gold. Trouble is everything else in that tungsten lit studio then looks wrong unless you go round putting half or full blue on every keylight, which makes them v. dim. It’s a minefield.
Things are getting better, in some respects, with the adoption of LED lighting… though they do thwart some Lighting Directors because their colour temp is constant as you fade them up and down and certain Lighting Directors like to use different colour temperatures (mixed lighting) to create "mood" in drama.
Geoff Fletcher
Brings to mind the old joke from the Goon Show.
Elderly Cockney Gent to Neddy Seagoon: "Me eyes aint wot they used to be. Yerss – they used to be me ears!"
They don’t write ’em like that anymore!
Pat Heigham
I heard a story about a very good First Assistant director on a pirate sort of film. Calling for the murderous looking extras, he shouts out: "Where are my buccaneers!" A voice from the back yells back: "Either side of your buckin’ ‘ead!"
I have a friend who is red/green blind – traffic lights look the same sort of grey to him. He’s OK to drive, providing the position of the different lights are not changed! (He knows the bottom one is the Green for Go!)
Dave Plowman
It’s a common saying that women are better at matching colours than men – but there’s actually some truth in it. It’s in the genes. If you are male and have blue eyes, you’ve got a 30% chance of having defective colour vision. And the most likely fault is the inability to tell red from green – especially in low light conditions. Which makes it odd that red and green were chosen as opposites.
