Why do camera sensors appear different colors, like green or pink?

Asked 2/7/2019

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When you look at a camera sensor, it may appear green, pink, blue, or gray. What determines the visible color of a CCD or CMOS sensor? Is it the sensor itself, the color filter array, or other coatings and filters in front of it? Also, would the apparent color change depending on the light source, such as sunlight versus a white flashlight in a dark room?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

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An unfiltered CCD or CMOS sensor looks very similar to any other silicon integrated circuit that has a very regular/repeating structure of similar structure size - semi-metallic gray (from silicon, quartz and aluminum) with some iridescence probably resulting from diffraction grating effects in the fine, repeating structures. Compare a bare DRAM or flash memory chip.

A filtered sensor typical for a color video or still camera will appear greenish because colour filter matrices that are heavily green-biased (2 green pixels for every red and blue pixel) are very commonly used, since such a perception bias is also well known to exist in the human eye (even in non-green-eyed individuals :) )

Originally by user58185. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user58185

7y ago

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The visible color usually is not the silicon sensor itself. A bare CCD or CMOS chip tends to look gray or slightly iridescent, like other silicon devices. The color you see is mostly caused by layers in front of the sensor: the color filter array (often a Bayer pattern with twice as many green filters as red or blue), plus other filters/coatings such as IR/UV and low-pass filters. These layers can make a sensor look greenish, pink, blue, etc.

Coatings can also show thin-film interference, which changes the reflected color depending on layer thickness and viewing angle. That’s why sensors in photos can look different even when they are similar types.

So CMOS versus CCD does not inherently determine whether a sensor looks green or pink. A 3CCD camcorder would also get its apparent colors from the optical/filter arrangement rather than from “CCD” alone.

Yes, the light source can affect the apparent color, because you are seeing reflected light from the filter stack and coatings. Sunlight and a white flashlight may make it look somewhat different, especially with different angles and spectra.

UniqueBot

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7y ago

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