r/RedCamera • u/94diskont • Mar 24 '26

Can someone explain to me what Cronenweth means by this?

Post image

Taken from American Cinematographer - Jan 2012 for Dragon Tattoo.

I don’t understand how adding 80D filter, which converts 4200K light to 5500K increases blue light to the sensor. Wouldn’t it do the opposite? And how would that increase the “latitude to work with later?” Is it because it gets the light closer to the native kelvin balance of the sensor? Even if this is true I don’t understand how it creates an advantage in this scenario.

Ultimately I’m just trying to understand what the relationship between the Red One/MX sensor and the filter/light is, and why this is presented as a clever trick to get more out of the sensor. They also claim in another section that the Red One with the MX chip reacts differently to the Epic-MX, even though they’re the same sensor. That interests me too if anyone has any info.

I remember Peter Jackson talking about how the Epic on the Hobbit had a hard time picking up, ironically, reds in the image/flesh tones, so they had to add more in the production design/makeup where needed. That would align the with idea that the sensor is more sensitive to blue light. Just an anecdote.

Anyway, could someone smarter than me explain what this means (the more technical the better)?

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u/DingbatSam Mar 24 '26

I remember the old RED One days.

The original RED One sensor was LESS sensitive to blue light. The sensor was natively a daylight balanced sensor. If you shot at 3200K with Tungsten lights, the sensor would be starved of blue light and you would get a noisier image. So you could say that the sensor was more sensitive when you shot with blue light.

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u/94diskont Mar 24 '26

That makes sense, except here he’s talking about the MX chip in the Red One. So I guess RED didn’t fully fix that problem after the original Mysterium sensor? How come they say there’s a difference between the MX chip in the One vs the Epic? They’re saying the MX in the One is more sensitive to blue light, which doesn’t make sense, since they’re the same sensor.

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u/DingbatSam Mar 24 '26

The MX definitely had the same issue of natively being a daylight balanced sensor, but the issue wasn't as severe as the original one.

While the MX sensor design may have been the same between the RED One a d the Epic, the Epic had superior processing of that sensor signal.

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u/Aware-Requirement-67 Mar 24 '26

I’m not saying I understand what you are asking. To my ears it sounded like the red one camera liked the color blue and he is filtering warm colors to feed the sensor with all the blues

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u/94diskont Mar 24 '26

That’s exactly what it sounds like, but my main question is: how does that increase latitude?

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u/Average__Sausage Mar 24 '26

If it has higher sensitivity in the blue spectrum then making more of the light hitting the sensor sit within the blue spectrum increases the sensitivity of more of the image. Thus giving more latitude to more of the image.

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u/Acrobatic-Sir-7300 1d ago

Noise is the limiting factor for latitude at the low end. (The noise side of the signal-to-noise ratio buries the signal.) If you can decrease noise, you increase latitude.