>
> No, it's your eye playing tricks on you.
>
> Our eyes are highly calibratible optical measurement tools - they work
> as well at a brightness of 10% as at 1,000% (and then some), and get
> object colors right regardless of lighting conditions.
>
>

This is not correct. You only understand the physics of the optical system, but
not the physiology nor the psychology. This is not how we see. You are talking
as if you could see yourself seeing and you can not. What you are seeing is a
model of how you think things appear. This is a very subtle and complex mystery.
The eye does not see. The lens, the retina or whatever. The are merely
transmission and conversion mechanisms. It's the brain and, to be more exact,
it's the visual cortex that perceives things. And it is nothing like a camera --
a long time but antiquated model for perception. It is not a camera but a
complex post-processing system, that enhances edges, exaggerates movements, etc.
that are not part of the optical or sensory input. And even to call it a machine
is not accurate. I suggest you read some more current literature on the
physiology of perception, how the visual cortex works, and in the artist realm a
book like Gombrich's Art and Illusion. Your are right about the so-called
"constancies" but this is not a matter of optics but of psychology and much of
that psychology comes to the conclusion that what we see less about how we see
"reality" but how we see what we think we see.

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