lmTrying Loc: WV Northern Panhandle

That's funny. I wonder how many of his buddies messed with him just to see the fireworks.

Silverman Loc: Michigan

It's ironic, but in my younger years I wanted to pursue electronics, but as I grew older and realized I had a very difficult time distingeousing between a RED wire and a GREEN wire, I said to myself, if I do not get this right, I might hurt myself or someone else, so.....I am now a retired Auto Worker who enjoys Photography.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Before the UK adopted the EU standard for the mains electricity supply we used to have red for the live wire and green for the earth wire. Quite a dodgy set-up considering the most common colour blindness is red/green . Now we have brown for the live wire, which to my mind looks decidedly earthy....

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

That is actually quite funny to me since I work with electrical power cables every day. You see, with my red/green blindness, almost everything that includes reds, are brown to me. However, over here, we solved the problem with the "hot" wires and the returns (neutral). We made them all black.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

So most colour-blind people see red as brown? We always were a bit sceptical of the wisdom of joining the EU . So your answer is make live and neutral both black and do away with the earth wire altogether. That's inspired . Just think of the confusion that's going to avoid .

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Yes, I think so. Oh, and get a load of this! Black people come off to me with a tinge of what I interpret as olive. Weird, huh? To answer about earth ground, it is ALWAYS there in one form or another. In house wiring, we have black, white (return) and green for Earth ground. Now remember, we are on a standard 110v system over here. All electrical transformers are supposed to be grounded to Earth. When one looks up at a utility pole and sees the electrical wiring in a residential neighborhood for example, they would see a silver looking wire wrapped with the power wires. Those would be an Earth ground.

The job I have now is underground utility locating and damage forensics and the occasional burnt body in a fire damaged building (pretty gross, huh?) When locating cable television cables, we always disconnect any grounding wires. Same thing with underground telephone wires. We do this because with our equipment, we send an independent signal along those main wires. If we did not unground them, our signal would jump top Earth ground and we would detect nothing. With electrical cables, we do just the opposite. we use the Earth ground for our signal path.

Oh, it gets better. I take an average of 1000 photos per day in my job. They all have to be Jpeg, unaltered in any way (no photoshopping) and the colors have to be concise. In addition, when doing damage investigations, most of the wires damaged are in trenches of some sort. Therefore, I need a camera that does in camera HDR (that is allowed in court since it is not considered to be photoshopping). This is why I use a Sony. When doing fire investigations, I have to be real careful about blowing out the whites. Here, I do not use a flash. The HDR mode comes in real handy with this one. I also have to be real good with white balance (especially when shooting Jpegs).

So, when you see a lot of my posts, many were originally shot in Jpeg and they are almost always spot on with exposure, color, WB, and contrast. I am always fearful of the raw police coming after me as well as those who say that it does not matter what the WB settings are when shooting in raw. Really? Huh. I just keep laughing at all the responses to the OP that he can always shoot in B&W. Again, really?

I officially found out I was red/green colorblind while in the army. I signed up for helicopter training and passed all of the written math tests. Then they did the eye exam. That was it for me. All of this time, my parents just thought I was eccentric with the mismatched socks and all. It still did not stop me from making my career in electronics in one form or another. There is always a work around.

I excel in hunting because of this. Since I don't take in as much information as the rest of you, I can detect movement in the brush rather easily since I can detect the sudden change in contrast (movement). A lot of animals (deer for example) are totally colorblind for this very reason. It is a defense mechanism. Pretty interesting, eh?

Now, if I can only get my composition down.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Hmmm..... So there's a connection between underground utility locating and damage forensics..... I'm sure it all makes perfect sense . I wonder if shooting jpegs is obligatory for colour blind people. As myself and AzPicLady suggested, if a colour blind person edits to achieve what to them looks normal (or enhanced normal) it should look normal (or enhanced normal) to everybody else. As for the electronics, you wouldn't be the first person that persisted in using a multimeter to identify resistances. The colours for 1 and 2 (brown and red) would be a tad confusing, and the difference between two zeros and five zeros (green = five) could be somewhat significant in some situations....

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

What forensics means to underground utility locating is when a line is either mismarked (location) or not marked at all and then are damaged by digging. Sometimes a contractor or home owner will dig before calling us and hit a line of some sort. It is required by law in the U.S. to call our type of service before digging, even if it is just a tree. I also locate natural gas lines. The reason for Jpeg only is because if a damage case goes to court, a photo can not be used if altered in any way. Converting raw to Jpeg is considered altering. Anything done in camera is allowable. Sony was one of, or perhaps the very first to incorporate in camera HDR. This is real handy when photographing a trench and the damaged cable is hidden by shadows. Even a flash at low level can distort the or obscure the view. In camera is not to be confused with that paint by numbers type of HDR that can be done in many of the post processing programs. This is not to say that flash photography is never used. We use it quite often. And yes, I own several multi meters. I don't need to meter resistance all that often since the color bands are assigned certain values, therefore when I read the color bands, I know that if the value is an odd one to me, I can usually figure out quickly what the value must really be without having to use the multi meter. Same thing with a traffic control light. Since I know red is on top and green is on the bottom, I can simply tell by the intensity of the lamp which one to pay attention to. Easy. Same thing in photography. I have no problem using tonal curves. If one who is not colorblind is doing a color adjustment and it looks strange to them, it really looks weird to me. Easy. So, those folks even though they mean well by suggesting that the OP shoot in B&W, really don't need to.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Thanks for the info and the insights into a world I'm not familiar with.



Maybe I need to find somebody that's colour blind to run things past when I'm editing . If I spend too long playing with colours I can end up blind to colour casts and skewed colours.

Bigbeartom44

I am also "color blind". I have the exact problem that you mention. I can use the blue/yellow settings when I am correcting the color of photos but I leave the red and greens alone. I can see the colors but can't discern the tones. I don't let this stop me from enjoying color pictures. Some times I get a funny look for these colors but I don't let it bother me. I was in junior high before I found out that I was red/green color blind. I was at the optomitrist's office and he tested me with a book of color dots and I could see the first 2 pages and after that it was no go. The good news, when I was in the Army, It kept me from working with explosives! It also kept me from flying. The bad news is it didn't keep me out of the Army.

YellowDog Loc: Gulf Coast near New Orleans

An excellent response by Jimmy T.

I too am Red-Green color blind according to several ophthalmologists who have tested my vision.
My problems come with distinguishing light blue from light pink, and dark red from brown.

Have been shooting DSLRs since 2006 without any issues. I do not keep to black and white as I like color
images. Just a few years ago I invested in a small device (by Illuminati) that measures the degrees Kelvin of
an area. Particularly with indoor shots (like with family gatherings), I will measure the degrees Kelvin ahead of time and set that into my DSLR. So far, no complaints from family and friends. I do not shoot RAW images and then get into one of the fancy software packages. I leave that alone.

Yellow Dog

Bob in SD Loc: Sioux Falls, SD

I also have red/green color vision issues. I have tried the red/green color enhancement glasses as they do help, however I did not keep them due to cost.

As long as I don't change hues and color shades, I do fine with all the other aspects of post processing.

Red/green color problems are genetic and almost always in males as it is a sex linked gene.

Usually people are not totally red/green blind, but impaired. Don't just do B/W photography as you will miss so much.

You can do this in color!!!!!!!!

Bob

Bill_de Loc: US

As others have mentioned, there's nothing wrong with black and white photography.

But, it might be fun to take a couple of your B&W photos and run them through.

Whatever, if you like photography there are more than a few ways to approach it.

Best of luck!

---

Orphoto Loc: Oregon

This thread is now for the calendar blind. You are replying to 6 year old inquiries.

If you think this is an important topic, start a new thread.

wishaw

50 years ago there were color slides. Lots of companies sold them they also processed them or you could do it yourself. The thing was that every companies slides were different ie the colors were slightly different. So forget the problems and get on with taking pictures