Hello there,

I'd just like some advice on my dissertation subject and if it is at all possible.

I'm a digital film student currently in my final year and I've been searching for a subject on which to write my dissertation. I'm going for a BSc rather than a BA so a social commentary piece just won't cut it! Now, the subject I believe to be most fascinating is digital colour realisation and how it compares with the way our eyes perceive colour.

I was hoping to create a comparison between old film cameras and new digital cameras in how they perceive colour and which is most successful at realising colour as our eyes see it. Perhaps then, I may elaborate on this in later essays as to give a clue on how to improve the engineering of cameras in this aspect.

I am intending to conduct an experiment-

Basically to take an object showing the entire visible colour spectrum, and place it in a sealed room with one constant source of unnatural light(I understand that due to sun movement and so many other factors this would be impossible to conduct using natural light).

Then I would proceed to shoot the object using various different cameras from the same position in the room(with exactly the same shutter/iris/white balance settings) and analyze the outcome.

Afterward I would take this data and a. apply some formula of human eye colour perception(if such a thing exists) and see which camera comes closest, or, (in a dreamland with some magical grant and technology that I'm not even sure exists), conduct the same procedure with a human eye(or pair, on an actual person) and then compare that data with that of the various cameras.

Now, I've dug around a little and understand (in a very simple sense) how our eyes perceive colour (rods, cones, 1 set for light intensity, 3 for colour and so on). However, I'm not sure if this can be measured in any quantifiable way. Is our individual perception of colour so vastly different that there is no average? And how is colour perception measured exactly, if it can be at all? Also, does the fact that our eyes create stereoscopic vision affect our sense of colour at all. Also considering that we can see a banana is yellow under all lights because of our brains, is this a brain question and is there no such thing as digital(or film-produced) true to life colour?

Please forgive my ignorance to your field of expertise, but I am truly stuck, I have actually ran out of words to google for help! So if any of you has a clue on what I' going on about, I'd really appreciate some advice!

Thank you,

Rebecca Leigh Coates
Stuck Student!