Sorry for a newbie question but is there some way to alter this Skyrim behavior - I am not using any mods, but the changes in lightning and darkness are often too much, when I look into the sun for a very SHORT period and then to some dark spot, I can't see anything for quite LONG. It is mostly visible in Marakath, where I see these brightness changes too often, and it's very disturbing.
I don't have any other issues running Skyrim on highest detail (well not completely maxed, but who needs maxed AA, right?).
Thanks for any answer!

Working as intended.

Completely normal. It's an attempt at mimmicking our eyes reactions to too much or lack of light in real life.

Its fairly realistic and why we wear sunglasses in real life. We need a sunglasses mod.

Too much realistic for me... there should have been an ption to disable it, its rather annoying... my eyes are good enough at that so i dont need such "feature" in a video game.

Having several pc's i can say that the effect is simply worse (lasts longer) on some monitors , so its easy to see why some hate it, while others think its just fine.

The best info i could find on the subject so far is in the link below.
http://forums.steamgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2263292

If i find anything else, i'll post here, but since i'm not having the issue, i cannot really test any possible solutions that may help those who need it.

After some more searching, i found this.
It may be a bit more extreme than some are experiencing, but it does show that some peoples setups do have issues with the HDR lighting effect.
http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/518937-skyrim-lighting-problem/

Saw a post over here that mentions the effect can be disable with ENB.
i don't use it, so i have no clue if its true or not.
http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/503701-fluctuating-outdoor-brightness/page__p__4116139__hl__%2Bhdr+%2Blighting__fromsearch__1#entry4116139

Works as intended, called HDR, but in Skyrim the HDR is ridiculously overdone.

Just noticed this topic in the mods section with possible fix for those who need it.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352428-want-to-turn-off-overdone-eye-adjustment-effect/

Thanks to everybody!
The problem should be solved according to http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352499-getting-rid-of-annoying-eye-adjustment-effect/ (the same problem) with this mod:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=9995

That's actually true. We're looking at the screen with our eyes. Eyes that already have that "effect". Why would we need even more of that effect? Just saying our eyes should do that part for us already without an extra effect.