09 Apr 2011, 14:50
As the attentive members know I like to have applied fun with watches with my son.
Starting at 10.08 :wink: with bright andalucian mountain morning light we did a simple comparative legibility ´test´.
In the shade, so with minium reflection we compared;
- the Seiko EPD,
- two identical time only GS; one black one white dial, and
- a Vostok 1967 (big black dial diver). For good measure we added
- a Casio DW5600E and
- a crisp vintage National Semiconductor LED display watch.
The LED was immediately eliminated by the intensity of the bright sky.
Indoors and at arm´s length the LED has an advantage because it emits light but beyong this range the digits are too small and unprotected in the outside light it´s display just does not shine, not even at arm´s length.
Light emitting has no chance under 10.000+ lux indirect sunlight.
The Casio was out of it´s league too. Neither of us could make reliable sense of the display at one and a half meter so we concluded that is has arm length only range. It that distance however it is perfectly legible however bright the light.
With this much light the black dial had an advantage between the two 38 mm. GS watches but is was minimal and neither was there much difference between my and my son´s 9 y.o. eyesight/interpretation. Two metres and a half was the max. distance that time could be reliably ascertained. IF IN THE VERTICAL POSITION.*
Surprisingly enough I coud read the 1967 a tiny bit better than my son and this was my brain being better at interpretation and not my eyesight.
The double marker at ´12´ helped me although with a footnote that this did not have the same range.*
Three metres with bezel and watch upright.
The EPD we tried both black on white and inverse.
The black on white was very much more visible and this time brain interpretation had no influance as the digital read out is simple réad out. Neither did the position matter. We just needed a bít more time to read upside down or sideways but the position was appearent. We could either read it or not.
My son was almost half a metre better than me
The black background scored three and a half meter, the white background just over four meters
* the ´instinctive´ reading of anaologue time representation is :?
Only if the brain is véry experienced in analogue readings time only hands on a simple clear dial offer a slight advantage IF!!!! the dial is in the vertical position.
We cannot séé the analogue representation any better than a digital representation and the interpretation is just as much a pitfall as an advantage. If we interprete correctly it, it offers a slight ´legibility´ advantage but as it is only an appearant légibility we also are vulnerable to not realising a mistaken interpretation.
Even though my 1967 has the ´12´ position indentified by a double marker, this is not visible at the limit of the distance where my interpretative advantage over my son gave extra ´legibility´. If he did not keep the watch in the vertical position I could not read the time correctly. Turning the bezel added huge confusion and deminished my capacity to interpretate. Although the above basic ´test´ is far from exact, it is clear to mé that my tained ´instinctive´ advantage was more than negated by this.
The digital readout does not have these potential problems.
The other thing again shown is that the anaologue clock asks for more experience to be read correctly and a rotated bezel complicates this.
Now please do NOT take the distance as anything absolute. It was oúr eysight on thése watches under the andalucian morning sun in diffuse shade of a treeline. Change one thing and the distance changes. The relative distances however will stay much more constant.
Recalculating our simple fun test into indices and % would suggest a scientific validity which is not present.
Now since a wristwatch is worn on the wrist; legibility at arm´s length is sufficient
but the relative legibility still applies there too.
It was fun and informative with two imperfect real humans looking at watches in the imperfect real world :bounce:
Starting at 10.08 :wink: with bright andalucian mountain morning light we did a simple comparative legibility ´test´.
In the shade, so with minium reflection we compared;
- the Seiko EPD,
- two identical time only GS; one black one white dial, and
- a Vostok 1967 (big black dial diver). For good measure we added
- a Casio DW5600E and
- a crisp vintage National Semiconductor LED display watch.
The LED was immediately eliminated by the intensity of the bright sky.
Indoors and at arm´s length the LED has an advantage because it emits light but beyong this range the digits are too small and unprotected in the outside light it´s display just does not shine, not even at arm´s length.
Light emitting has no chance under 10.000+ lux indirect sunlight.
The Casio was out of it´s league too. Neither of us could make reliable sense of the display at one and a half meter so we concluded that is has arm length only range. It that distance however it is perfectly legible however bright the light.
With this much light the black dial had an advantage between the two 38 mm. GS watches but is was minimal and neither was there much difference between my and my son´s 9 y.o. eyesight/interpretation. Two metres and a half was the max. distance that time could be reliably ascertained. IF IN THE VERTICAL POSITION.*
Surprisingly enough I coud read the 1967 a tiny bit better than my son and this was my brain being better at interpretation and not my eyesight.
The double marker at ´12´ helped me although with a footnote that this did not have the same range.*
Three metres with bezel and watch upright.
The EPD we tried both black on white and inverse.
The black on white was very much more visible and this time brain interpretation had no influance as the digital read out is simple réad out. Neither did the position matter. We just needed a bít more time to read upside down or sideways but the position was appearent. We could either read it or not.
My son was almost half a metre better than me
The black background scored three and a half meter, the white background just over four meters
* the ´instinctive´ reading of anaologue time representation is :?
Only if the brain is véry experienced in analogue readings time only hands on a simple clear dial offer a slight advantage IF!!!! the dial is in the vertical position.
We cannot séé the analogue representation any better than a digital representation and the interpretation is just as much a pitfall as an advantage. If we interprete correctly it, it offers a slight ´legibility´ advantage but as it is only an appearant légibility we also are vulnerable to not realising a mistaken interpretation.
Even though my 1967 has the ´12´ position indentified by a double marker, this is not visible at the limit of the distance where my interpretative advantage over my son gave extra ´legibility´. If he did not keep the watch in the vertical position I could not read the time correctly. Turning the bezel added huge confusion and deminished my capacity to interpretate. Although the above basic ´test´ is far from exact, it is clear to mé that my tained ´instinctive´ advantage was more than negated by this.
The digital readout does not have these potential problems.
The other thing again shown is that the anaologue clock asks for more experience to be read correctly and a rotated bezel complicates this.
Now please do NOT take the distance as anything absolute. It was oúr eysight on thése watches under the andalucian morning sun in diffuse shade of a treeline. Change one thing and the distance changes. The relative distances however will stay much more constant.
Recalculating our simple fun test into indices and % would suggest a scientific validity which is not present.
Now since a wristwatch is worn on the wrist; legibility at arm´s length is sufficient
but the relative legibility still applies there too.
It was fun and informative with two imperfect real humans looking at watches in the imperfect real world :bounce:
´Design oder nicht sein´