RED Helium 8K Super 35mm Sensor is part of Michael Bay's custom camera

Love him or hate him, Michael Bay gets some of the coolest toys to use for making his movies. One of the cool custom cameras that RED has made specifically for Bay to use on Transformers: the Last Knight is very impressive. The cameras uses a RED Helium 8K Sensor in Super 35mm format. That sensor is known as Helium.

RED says the main difference between this new sensor and its 8K VistaVision sensor is size. The get 8K resolution into a smaller Super 35mm chip, RED had to make smaller and denser pixels. The Helium sensor is an entirely new 3.56-micron sensor line and the one used in Bay's camera is the first in the series.

That sensor will be available for Weapon sensor upgrades in the future. Word is that the sensor will also be used in the Epic-W camera. A forum update from Jarred Land also notes that RED is still suffering delays in its Dragon sensor supply since it is exhausting the sully as fast as they come out of the oven every few weeks. Land says that this supply issue will continue on for the near future.

A small batch of 8K VistaVision sensors were recently completed and shipped out to customers in products. Land notes that the 8K VistaVision sensor line is the slowest of them all. He also took the time to speak a bit about that 8K Super 35 sensor that is in Bay's camera noting that the sensor was "WAY ahead" of schedule. Land also expects the Helium sensor line to take pressure off Dragon sensor lines and allow those lines to focus on Raven and Scarlet-W production in the coming months.

SOURCE: Cinema5D and RedUser.net]