OK, it's not really a new colour. I was mucking about with my digital camera when I noticed that it could actually "see" the invisible infra red radiation from my TV remote control. Oddly, it rendered this invisible wavelength from the far red end of the spectrum not in red but in green - the exact complement in at least one colour model! If you're looking for green (e.g. through a green filter) the last thing you expect to see is red - it ought to be black! There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation why my camera's green sensors (and green alone) are able to see infra red but I am not in possession of that explanation. It's probably something to do with what scientists call weird shit or quantum bollocks or something.
Of course, this is how those infra red security cameras work. Normally we view the images in black-and-white so we're not really aware what colour of sensor actually recorded the image. I always imagined one needed a special sensor to record infra red - not so...
Anyway, this got me to wondering what else my camera could see that I couldn't, and what other lies it was telling me when I released the shutter.
Then came the bombshell! What's the problem with flash photography? Too white and too bright! Suppose you had an infra-red flashgun - that would provide the necessary green signal without startling your subjects. Then infill with just a touch of visible magenta flash to balance the colour to ambient levels. Result? A very unobtrusive flash, no more than a pinky glow at 2/3 the apparent brightness of a conventional flash.
More news soon...
Whats that colour when you close your eyes and look into the sun ?
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