Awesome Fujifilm X-TRANS SENSOR Secret you've never read about 

Watching a 7 year old video of yours. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I appreciate you

Wonderful information, and well presented . Thank you very much . I just fell in love with my X trans sensor even more.

full of information! thank you so much sir!

Fascinating!...thanks Ken, that was really interesting and easy to understand. Teaching comes naturally to you.

Ken, what a great lesson. I have a question though, whilst I understand (now) the X-Trans sensor theory and the reason we get such great colour saturation, why do I enjoy that same Fuji colour saturation on my GFX which has a Bayer sensor?

love it! great reviews! now ... what raw converter does not screw up these great RAW files? ON1?

Foveon has blue on top because there's absolutely no other way. They're using different photodiodes with different band gaps, which means each color diode will absorb any photon with a specific energy *or higher*. So the blue diode will only detect blue and UV (and pass the others through) and the green diode picks up anything from green to UV. The "red" on the bottom isn't really red, it will pick up anything from IR to UV. But luckily blue and green are already gone thanks to the other layers, so in effect it becomes a red pixel. So there's no other arrangement that allows you to detect the three primaries individually. Any other stacking will leave you with two or three colors detected already in the first layer.

I came because of your Fuji reviews,I didn't expect an in-depth physics lesson. Now, I am a subscriber.

Your best video yet Ken. I found it fascinating. My question is how are Fuji lenses able to have such good microcontrast with so many glass elements though? My guess is the amount of lens elements for modern lenses are still a modest amount and they are designed with the X-Trans sensor in mind?

Awesome video :) learned more on your channel about light and physics than in school :D keep it going ;) p.s. Fuji kicks ass

Fascinating. Very informative. Definitely my favourite video of yours. Thanks.

Great piece of info, well explained, thank's.

Great video Ken, thank you very much!

Thank you for a great lesson! One question though. It seems like there is one more possible beneficial outcome with x-trans arrangement - each blue and each red are adjacent to both the green and red/blue. On bayer, pattern blues/reds are only adjacent to greens. Seems like an advantage for calculating tones those purple or pink tones

Thank you for this interesting explanation. I have two questions if I may: 1) I understand the difference between Fuji jpegs and other jpegs, but is there any difference between raw files from a Bayer sensor corrected by post treatment and raw files from a Fuji trans sensor? Iow is the advantage visible in raw or only on jpegs? 2) is moiré truly absent on a Fuji trans sensor without alias filter?

Very interesting. My first thought is: Why did Fuji then forego the x-trans in the GFX-50X? And, out of curiosity, what does this tell us about the effects, say, of a red filter for black and white photography?

In the areas of the spectrum where the blue and green receptors overlap, is the blue receptor better at reading the blue light or are the green and blue receptors equally sensitive in the areas of the spectrum that they overlap?

they hate you but, they are in their basements in the closet watching this for the third time

Thanks for mentioning the X3 Foveon, I love what it does, made lots of special shots with my SD14. I just wish Sigma would build their bodies in C/N mounts so I could get the best of both worlds without buying two sets of glass.

Does it compare with a foveon sensor on sigma cameras? I know the issues like low sensibility and awful autofocus but i am impressed by foveon pictures sometimes...

Could watch your videos all day!

That's interesting. Thanks for the insight!

Gotta love this!!!! Your great man

And drum roll.......the GFX is a Bayer sensor. :)

i luv ur channel, it's art.

This is truly excellent information. Thank you.

really interesting. thank you

i wish my professors tought the way u do! excellent... :D

Thank you for the great explanation. I learned a lot. :)

There is a lot of blue in your room.

Great video. A bit above my comprehension level in places but thank you so much. Please Would you consider doing a video on the alleged "worm-like" goings on with Fuji, or the "painterly" effect or maybe the waxy skin thing? I haven't ever seen the worms or painterly effect but maybe I'm a bit rubbish with photography. I have seen the "waxy" skin thing but rarely and I can correct shooting RAW. I'm about to invest in an XT3 but genuinely would value your opinion and informed comment on these issues.

Is there any relationship (mean, median etc) between the ratio blue to green and green to red that reflects the golden ratio? If so that would be sweet and typical of the integrated beauty that is physics. Thank you btw

Legend has it, the X-Trans sensor was just the result of a lunchroom sudoku puzzle colored in by Janice from accounting.

Sounds similar to Heaviside's solution to the telegraph problem. Magnetism was being eaten up at a higher rate than the dielectric so he added magnetic tape at intervals to the cable to increase the magnetism. Here Fuji has added extra blue/green receptors to counteract the increased rate at which blue/green is eaten up by the glass. The application is different but the principle seems the same.

Hi ken, why did fuji get rid of the x-trans filter in the gfx50s?

how does this affect things if you take a photo of something that is heavily blue or heavily red?

Hi Ken, but adobe raw processing still suck isn't it? Will there ever be satisfaction for landscape photography?

Great informative video :)

to me even through your camera, my screen and RU-vid I still see the difference between the two blocks where the right block looks better than the left one.

Thanks for this amazing explanation. One question: I've always thought that Fuji managed to make better sensors because they had tons of knowledge about making film, unlike other sensor manufacturers. Do you think this could be right? Do you think the electronics/sensor engineers could have worked closely with chemistry/film engineers?

Wow Ken! I’m watching this three more times! Dropping knowledge we will never get from Tony or the fro!

Blue scatters more than red, yes. But the explanation given is incorrect. Blue is slower in glass than red. The idea that green receptors is in the middle of the visible spectrum can capture more light is correct.

Another stonkingly good explanation! love my fujis! Bloody hate the x pro eye cup. Useless...maybe the fuji guys could work on making one that doesn't keep falling off... Greetings from England! ;D

Fascinating video. If you had been my physics teacher I might have actually learned something. I love the analogy of the lens is like an antenna and the sensor is like a radio. Hope I got that right. Have no idea why anyone could downvote this video, other than abject ignorance.

So dear Ken... If I am catching you well, each time I am taking a picture with my X-T1 or X-PRO2 I have to fill a QSL card with my own ham radio callsign on it as my camera is a radio and the lens my yagi antenna ? :-) Didn't know you were an ham radio operator too, so nice ! I really like the scientific approach on this video, very well done again Ken. 73 de ON6CV.

Fuji was also different back in the film days. If memory serves they had an extra layer that nobody else had. It don't seem unusual for Fuji to think outside the box and come up with something different.

Is that a Hemmingray insulator? I have a few, but that small one you have looks really neat. Oh, and nice video!

Do they use the x-trans sensor in the GFX cameras? Very interesting, I've seen the diagrams but never has anyone explained it so well. Thanks!

Ok. Awesome explanation. But why are the gfx Bayer then.....

The colours are so vibrant and saturated, they almost look like tri-x... S tem videom, si pa res diplomiral. Good job

Question, would a camera be able to deal with more blue light attenuation with more blue receptors?

Super interesting

Hey Ken, so, if you use a low element count in the XT2 (for example an old nikon lens) are you going to get more blue then if you use the same lens in a D500 for example? That would be a cool experiment :)

Why does FujiFilm do not use the Pattern on the GFX Medium Format Sensors? Doesn't make sense for me....

You are the best

How big matrix (how many subpixels) represent one pixel which represent one information in output on X-trans vs Bayer? Xtrans is 3x3 and bayer 2x2? You showed 6x6 martix where are the borders of every pixel?

Humm and than thats why front elements on a lens reflect green or purple colors. To make even colors coming at the freaking sensor, i was about to ask you why and the these post awnser. Tell me if im wrong.

So good to have a knowledgeable camera person that knows physics, electronics, math, science and chemistry to explain the real reasons that things are done the way that they are done. Isn't that right Mr. wannabe Tony Northrup?

This green thing reminds me of the Bausch & Lomb R+D that yielded the G-15 lens for sunglasses. The lens is gray-green in tint & it gives a remarkable sense of neutral color. Seems to work well for human eyes & perception. Thanks for the deeper background on the X-Trans.

Great video! But i still don't understand one thing about what you said. If i'm correct, you basicly say, that green pixels also record some blue light (and yellow) in case of a high element lens. But (and correct me if i'm wrong) the sensor behind the color filter only can mesure the amount of the incoming light, not the frequency. And one full color pixel (wich you see in the picture) is added together from the information about the three colors. So in this case when the image is being made, the algorithm does only know three informatios: X many red light, Y many green light and Z many blue light adds together this egzact color. So all the added blue and yellow light is seen by the algorithm as green light, no further subcathegories egzists. How can they retrive the yellow and blue information froma green pixel? Maybe if they don't translate the light amount info as a green but a greenish/yellowish/blueish color (if cuch a thing egzists...) But i don't know. Can you help me understand this one? Also sorry for my bad english!

Interesting statements on the blue spectrum of light... probably why we see lots of blue hues on solar panels...

The only thing that changes with xtrans is that alias is at different frequencies because nyquist is different. The design cleans up luma at high frequencies but the luma is mid frequencies has lots of alias. Any resolution chart shows this. Chroma is also a little inferior. Fuji add a lot of chroma noise reduction to fix this and eliminate a lot of chroma to keep the shadows free from chroma noise. The shadows are almost monochromatic and that is the fuji style. Even in-camera development from raw to tiff is not free from this processing. Noise reduction controls do not affect it. It is active even in iso160 and it is very heavy.

Ken, my assumption is that Fuji would have patented the hell out of this technology, right? Could one believe that amongst any improvements to the next generation Sensor, more Green photo sites would be implemented? Or is there a particular ratio of green, blue and red sites that must occur thereby limiting the number of green sites in relation to red and blue?

I wonder what the Nikon 105mm f1.4 would look on that.

fuji are masters at math for doing their optics

Ever go to Hamvention in Dayton Ohio?

Hmmm, you’re a very interesting guy and I need to rewind and listen again, but the point being Fuji made a sensor in consideration of how the glass effects the chromo attenuation of the visible spectrum and created its sensor matrix accordingly, whereas the other guy uses a balanced sensor and loses the blue end of the spectrum via attenuation or actually spectral absorption. Thanks for the education......

because our sun is a green light stars. the sun real wave length is in green. this is also the reason why leaf on earth is green, to avoid sun burn of course.

Ken: you are a world treasure, your explanations are easy to understand. You should write a comprehensive photo course for us laymen you will make a fortune for your practical knowledge and be in the Pantheon of the Photo Gods on Mt. Olympus :)

What if they used negative green as a carrier?

But can this explain why trees always looks not that sharp than my Nikon? I always feels that the edge of green trees not so sharp on my xt10.

So what's the trade off ?

Foveom images are like sex on silicon. But that's a 6 x 6 block.

I guess blue intensity explains why skies would blow out in black and white film photography unless red filter was used

Hmmm. Maybe I'll get a polarizer.

Should I pull the trigger on the fuji X-T2 or wait for the Olympus OMD EM1 Mk2 or Panasonic GH5 to drop?

Fuji is miles above any other company as far as sensor tech

interesting.

5:27 Foveon docet

Are there no limits to your scope of knowledge Ken? Great stuff, as always.

So...xtrans aray ccd medium format sensor would rule the world until the use of silicon is replaced

I say old boy you are a very clever chap! although, sorry all that waffle you have come out with,I didn't understand a blinking word of it! I must correct you though, you cannot get the BBC World Service on a Fuji XT2 I've twiddled every knob and it will not tune in to any radio station! Dashed unsporting if you ask me!! So keep your chin up old bean!! Toodle Pip!!

The New Fujifilm GFX G50s supposedly has a Bayer sensor. How will it affect it in your opinion ?

so why they have decided to dump Xtrans in their new medium format monster?

You are such a nerd ,In a good way :-)

awesomemanythanksIownfujixt1

"However, a full-frame image sensor is physically about 63% or 1.6x larger than an APS-C format image sensor."

So if "the lens alone has high attenuation of blue light" that means even if an adapter connecting the lens electrically to other cameras could be developed it would look like crap.

Hmmmm what is the secret and new here?Something what was known from physics almost two century ago.Blue light is not completely attenuated but more or less absorbed, (shorter you go more absorbed it is, depending from lens material). EUV is e.g completely this is why one has to use vacuüm as medium and mirrors in stead of lens.However it is a good video.

Blue light isn't more attenuated than red in transmissive media but rather red is. Red photons have less energy than blue photons and so are more heavily absorbed in any medium; blue light photons are scattered out of the optical axis more than red however causing micro-contrast loss in the blue spectrum and image degradation. So Fujifilm's use of high element-count lenses causes blue loss not red but CMOS sensors are so much more sensitive to red than blue that this loss is adequately compensated for by this quantum efficiency difference.

They are all CMOS sensors, they called filters ( Bayer and X-Trans )

I find fujifilm xtrans sensor produces faded soft colours. Not vibrant. Leica on the other hand produces vibrant thick better colours.

mr angry photographer. I just read that red has the longest wave lenght then green then blue. on the foveon censor we see that blue filter on the top. why that in bayer censor wich in 2x2 pixel block has 2green 1blue and 1red, or why is that in xtrans 3x3 pixel block implementation has 5green 2 blue and 2 red?. considering blue is the weakest of all of them, pixel with blue filter should be enphasized right? why we see green filter is more emphasized?. or because blue color is most rare color in this planet?

you do not shoot JPEG but you shoot RAW + FINE, XD so you do shoot JPEG hehe.

Soooo ... Fuji good? I just watched a video saying Fuji sensor bad? I’m confused

You quit talking about the foveon sensor? So bayer is worse color saturation than x-trans because of the lack of green but how does the x-trans compare to the foveon sensor? which is better?

So there is no reason to buy Fuji if I shoot raw

Thank you for providing content that is more cerebral than all the junk out there that speaks to the average ignorant populace.

9x9 but I see 6×6...me worry😌

So why do Fuji Bayer sensor cameras (XA series, XT100/200) use the same lenses as the Fuji Xtrans sensor cameras? And many people prefer the Fuji Bayer sensor results over the Xtrans, using the same lens. So this attenuation of blue light as described here cannot be the whole story. Also the ‘which I’ll get to in a minute' remark followed 10 minutes later by 'which I’ll get to in a minute' 😂😂.