What they're saying is that if you live north enough, you're likely to be working during a time when there _is no sunlight_. A window does nothing when it's dark outside by the time your 4p.m. meeting comes around

It’s still easy to add indirect lighting at night, but you need to cover up southern faction windows in the daytime.

At my latitude I'll lose sunlight at 2pm in the middle of winter. I can fix the webcam, I can't fix how much sunlight is available in my locale.

You don’t need sunlight for even indirect lighting.

My window faces onto a neighbour's house. They have painted this area white.

On my webcam, the window is behind me and it picks up this area outside the window and assumes the picture is overexposed because it doesn't expect to pick up large areas of basically #ffffff, and tries to dim the rest of the picture and darkens everything inside. Too much in fact, so it looks like I'm in a really dark room. The Logitech software does not support adjusting this behaviour, only adjusting the picture after the fact like the brightness sliders in your favourite image editor, so boosting them to compensate for the underexposed feed the webcam is providing the computer just results in a super washed out picture with still awful contrast.

I could rotate my office setup but then that introduces other issues, like glare on computer monitors or poor legroom due to radiator or insufficient space for a desk due to the neighbouring en suite cutout. I could close the curtains on the window and then just rely on electric light.

But these are all solutions worse than the problem of my webcam feed being underexposed, so they're not happening.

I wonder how you can work on your screen: the shining white window behind you should give large reflections that strain and fatigue (my) eyes very quickly.

My rule of thumb at workplace is no uncovered windows behind me.

Bright matte screens are pretty good at minimising reflections, plus with my current monitor angling the only one directly opposite the window has me between it and the window.

Man, he's just saying webcams are still shit, not that your pontification about light is wrong. Besides, how many of us get to choose the placement of our windows more easily than the camera we use?