hot pixels

[silverknight]

just wondering, are hot pixels noticed in photo's due to dust? or something else?

doing the sensor cleaning doesnt seem to help.

Its 4 pixels in a cross shape, quite obvious in some pics, in the right light, its not so pronounced.

time for a proper sensor clean?

[Zewrak]

Originally Posted by silverknight

just wondering, are hot pixels noticed in photo's due to dust? or something else?

doing the sensor cleaning doesnt seem to help.

Its 4 pixels in a cross shape, quite obvious in some pics, in the right light, its not so pronounced.

time for a proper sensor clean?

Hot pixels are broken sensors inside the sensor. Imagine the sensor as we talk about sensors a big plane with alot of tiny sensors. When one of them small sensors "break" it cant register data and you get a hot pixel. Just like on a LCD monitor that have for example a green pixel somewhere. It's not because of dust, its because there is a damage on that particular pixel in the sensor.

[silverknight]

dang - that sounds serious - and if the camera is out of warranty?

is this going to be a repair or a replacement?

[Lowell Goudge]

Most cameras have hot pixles, they are easy to edit out, and also the camera can do this if noise reduction is turned on.

I also bnelieve that pentax can map them and eliminate them. You might want to call.

Unless you have a ton of them, I would leave it alone

[baw]

Originally Posted by silverknight

is this going to be a repair or a replacement?

It's a very simple procedure to map out the hotpixels. The software is probably embedded in the firmware.
For my Nikon 5700 a guy wrote a small program to start the on camera remap routine. It produced a table in the camera with max. 512 hotpixel positions.

The software should be available for consumers imo. Now you have to send in the camera to have Pentax do the remapping (probably at a cost)
The new K20D has the remap routine available for the consumer.