The Red One has a sensor balanced to 5000 Kelvin daylight. This is an important point to grasp because the sensor captures the cleanest images under daylight sources. This does not mean you can’t shoot the Red One in tungsten mode, but if you do you are more susceptible to getting digital noise as you have not activated the Red One sensor’s blue channel. To activate the blue channel while in tungsten mode, you can introduce a blue backlight. However, having to resort to using blue light in a warm, motivated tungsten scene to avoid potential digital noise is aesthetically ridiculous. Technology needs to propel us forward, not hold us back. The Red One sensor’s bias to daylight is without a doubt my single biggest peeve about it. Further exacerbating my gripe, while traditional daylight film stocks and daylight lights measure 5600 Kelvin, the Red One chose a sensor balanced to 5000 Kelvin. I can’t fathom why, however my task is not to question and complain, but rather to find solutions and solve.
Red Camera, Rated 320 ASA, Daylight setting, 85mm Zeiss lens. Because the Red sensor is balanced to 5000 degrees Kelvin it renders the sky deep blue.
Arriflex 435 35mm camera, 250 ASA Daylight Kodak film stock, 85mm Zeiss lens. Because daylight-balanced film stock is 5600 degrees Kelvin, the sky is rendered closer to the color blue your eye sees.
In response to the Red One sensor’s bias issues, I add 1/4 Color Temperature Orange (CTO) gels to my HMI’s daylight lights and carry 81 series filters to help balance the color temperature as needed. As a side note for filmmakers who are fans of daylight-balanced fluorescent and LED lights, you are in fine shape as those sources - like the Red One - are balanced to 5000K exactly. The 81a filter converts 5600K to 5000K with one-third of a stop loss; the 81ef converts 7500K to 5000K with two-thirds of a stop loss. These filters are very useful when shooting with the Red One as I find the camera’s sensor moves blue toward the purple spectrum for some reason, when the color temperature increases from 7000K to 11000K.
Inverse Music Video, Red One Camera. Notice how the above Red-captured image moves toward the purple spectrum as color temperature increases above 7000 degrees Kelvin.
When shooting with the Red One I am not scared to stack filters up to control exposure and enhance in-camera images as I desire. I use polarizers to saturate skies or control reflections when shooting at angles through glass or water. I use graduated neutral-density (ND) filters to control exposure. I use straight neutral-density (ND) filters to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor, thus allowing a larger aperture to create shallow depth of field. But be careful because multi-stop neutral-density (ND) filters exacerbate the Red One camera’s sensitivity to light in the IR spectrum, which though not visible to the human eye can result in color shifts and prevent capturing of true blacks. To help prevent this oddity when using neutral-density (ND) filters on the Red One, I use NDs in conjunction with a Tru-Cut IR-750 filter, which corrects the potential for color shifts.
