A caption on a Tumblr photograph has divided households and workplaces as many people remain adamant they know the correct answer to ‘Is this dress blue and black or white and gold?’.
Thousands upon thousands of people have weighed in on the debate over the colour of the dress in the photograph.
Calgary photographer Neil Zeller reserved judgment on the dress' colour, but pulled no punches when it came to the quality of the image.
“The picture itself is a terribly photographed dress,” said Zeller. “I think it’s on a phone. There’s a bright background, it’s shot into the shadows, and the camera is trying to average out what you think it’s seeing.”
The professional photographer says the limitations of cameras, especially cellphone cameras, have prompted the debate.
“Our eyes see 16 stops of light which means 16 levels of light. We can see deep into shadows and we can see details and highlights all at the same time, where as if we’re using a camera, a good camera is only going to see four of those stops of light.”
“If we were standing in front of that dress we would be able to definitively tell what that colour is.”
Optometrist Russ Schultz says the debate over the photographed dress is a matter of perception with a number of factors contributing to colour interpretation.
“It depends on our retina and what the density and amount of cones in the macula, the centre of the retina,” explains Schultz. “It also depends on how healthy our eyes are and how healthy our visual cortex is in the brain.”
For the record, the dress is available for sale on Amazon in four colour combinations:
- black and blue
- solid pink
- red and white
- white and black.
The dress is not available in white and gold.
