[what if...] EPIC Two Sided Sensor

[Bing Bailey]

it would be great if EPIC was a two sided sensor. daylight balanced on one side and then flip for the tungsten balanced side. no idea how difficult this we be to implement but it sure would rock

[Mike Prevette]

Making a truly tungsten balanced sensor is damn near impossible with the current materials in chip making. All of the current "tungsten" balanced chips achieve it with on chip filtration and analogue gain.

[Graeme Nattress]

Thanks Mike. I get tired of telling people that there aint no such thing as a tungsten balanced silicon based sensor. Tungsten light is blue deficient, and silicon is insensitive to blue. So there's two things you can do:

boost gain (elecontronic or analogue) on blue
or
dumb down the red and green with ND.

Graeme

[Deanan]

dumb down the red and green with ND.


This equates to an ISO 100 rating for a tungsten balanced sensor and limits the flexibility that you get with controlling the color balance via filtering or gain.

[diskojerk]

I got a better idea, why don't they invent a sensor that magical unicorns dance in and shoots out rainbows and butterflies.

[Noah Kadner]

I got a better idea, why don't they invent a sensor that magical unicorns dance in and shoots out rainbows and butterflies.

Now that would be something to see! Of course there's also this little thing called White Balance that has worked wonders for all non-film cameras, forever it seems...

-Noah

[Bing Bailey]

Thanks Mike. I get tired of telling people that there aint no such thing as a tungsten balanced silicon based sensor. Tungsten light is blue deficient, and silicon is insensitive to blue. So there's two things you can do:

boost gain (elecontronic or analogue) on blue
or
dumb down the red and green with ND.

Graeme

Graeme,

it was just a question. I'm not a sensor engineer.

[Graeme Nattress]

It's ok, and a good question. I'm happy to answer it and explain.

Graeme

[J. Bernard Vallon]

the other issue is flipping the sensor would totally wreck your collimation.

[Adam Levins]

And the dust issue would be insane!

[Justin K Phillips]

Hm. Could they put a phosphorescent or fluorescent coating on the sensor like they do for astronomical applications (for UV sensitivity, but it should work for blue, too)? I'm not sure whether the pros would outweigh the cons on that one, but it's worth thinking about.