on 2012-06-27 16:08 Bob W wrote
he gives a range for normal *reading* distance of 12-16". This is for reading books.
interesting; in my experience, the range is much wider, and the age of tablets and phones is making it even more variable
For reading a desktop computer the health & safety, ergonomics people usually talk about 20", or approximately arms-length - you'd have to look at their sites to get a better definition, and possibly also a bell curve.
i've been keen on display ergonomics since the 80s, and never seen statistics on what people do in real life — just recommendations of what is best — but i would be very interested to see such stats
However, I don't know why you need a bell curve - you just have to look around you at a large number of people looking at pictures in every day circumstances
in fact i have done that, focusing on phones (in a discussion elsewhere regarding the "retina display" concept); i've seen a few people reading phones as close as 6" and some the way i read mine (24" or more); my own computer displays are farther — my laptop display ("hi-res" version of MacBook Pro) is up to 40" away (950 cm right now); at that distance, the individual pixels have a small enough angle of view that they fit the "retina" definition
btw, the arm length thing is a fallacy because people's eyes are not in their shoulders; without contortions, with my arm fully extended, 45 degrees from horizontal (lap position) can hold the phone properly 32.5" from my eye; this has something to do with my neck and face dimensions and distance from my shoulder to my neck
Mante's claim is that the viewing distance should be twice the diagonal of the picture, ergo the diagonal should be half the viewing distance. Mante studied at the Bauhaus and although he doesn't give specific references for his claims, he does say that his aim is to extend to photography the findings published in the Bauhaus books.
i think it's worth knowing what the "Bauhaus position", as it were, might be, and i thank you for that pending my inter-library loan; but i do think it's very subjective; where is the Mante of today, working on the pragmatics of viewing on-screen images?
-- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
