brocknroller
porromaniac
David's motives for bringing up this thread can be assessed by reading his posts in it.
The thread takes some philosophical turns, however, the debate has continued on other threads, and since that time, I've found "further testimony" by both experts and average joes who agree that color balance affects apparent contrast and apparent contrast affects perception of brightness.
As long as you stick in the word "apparent" in there, most "quants" won't argue with you, because they don't know what to do with that word. Some diehards might try to equate "apparent" with "illusion" as their way of discrediting perceptual results.
A lot of debates turn out to be over "semantics," and this one was no exception. I used the term "brightness" generically, as any average joe would talking about how bright something looks to his eyes rather than how much light the optics transmits. Hence, the philosophical tangent.
As Frank D. pointed out if I had used the word "apparent" in front of brightness, the entire debate might have been moot.
The debate behind the debate was about the difference between what is measurable/quantifiable and what is not (or perhaps "not yet").
To some mindsets, if an observation is not measurable or if ALL observers cannot confirm it, it either does not exist or it is outside the realm of science (see Carl Sagan's "Demon Haunted World" for hundreds of examples). I wouldn't argue with the latter interpretation, but I would with the former.
Perceptions do exist and to ignore them or devalue them, because they do not jive with a quantified measurement when talking about optics is like listening to a stereo recording through one speaker. You miss half the information that's coming to you.
Take out all the perceptual observations and opinions about optics that are not quantified from BF threads, and 90% of the posts would vanish! This includes posts by some very experienced and astute observers, and dare I say, even some post by the "quants" themselves.
That was my philosophical objection to those who devalue human perception in favor of quantifiable "results". Even at the quantum level, human observation influences the results!
Okay, that premise (hopefully) out of the way, my assertion is that color balance can influence one's perception of apparent brightness and even "sharpness" (another non-quantifiable concept, not to be confused with "resolution").
You don't need to do any "bench tests" or have a Ph.D. in visual physics to figure this out for yourself. All you need to do is to spend some "quality" time beyond a number of different bins, with at least one that has a "warm" bias, and compare them back and forth on different objects and under different lighting conditions to experience this "truth" for yourself.
In fact, this "truth" is so "self-evident," I'm surprised it was not included in the U.S. constitution.
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