K100D Hot Spots

Eigengrau · 11-10-2008, 09:37 AM

I have 6-10 hot pixels that have been showing up consistently on every single image I take. I haven't done thorough tests yet, but the problem appears to be especially prominent from IS0800 up.

So, my K100 is out of warranty at this point, so I'm wondering: is there any way to pay Pentax to have this fixed, or is there some way to mitigate it? I've got Apple's Aperture, and the repair function does an amazing job at taking care of these spots, but just hunting them down and getting rid of them is making PP take way longer than it otherwise should. Is there a way to automate this in any computer program?

These spots are bright green and pink, and have been an utter pain to deal with.

TIA

**Marc Sabatella** · 11-10-2008, 11:12 AM

Many RAW converters take care of hot pixels automatically, If Aperture doesn't, it might be time to consider something else. Because hot pixels are kind of unavoidable.

*YJD* · 11-10-2008, 12:10 PM

I'm using Bibble Pro and it fixes that for me since I have the same problem that yours. Though mine still under warranty so I night send it back towards the end.

Bibble Pro is pretty cheap ($120 at Amazon), and you will get for free the new version coming up by the end of the year (which will cost $200). I do all my pictures with, so just go check my blog!

**Damn Brit** · 11-10-2008, 01:17 PM

Yes you can send it in to Pentax to have the pixels mapped out. People have also been finding out that their camera (K10) comes back focusing better, I'm not sure about the K100.
I have the same problem with my K10 but I'm waiting to buy a second body before I send mine in.

alohadave · 11-10-2008, 01:31 PM

Lightroom takes those right out for me. Either in long night shots, or high ISO, I haven't had to clone out a hot pixel since I started using LR.

Eigengrau · 11-11-2008, 10:28 PM

Well, thanks for your replies.

Doing some further research, apparently the Aperture community is a bit divided over this issue. In older versions, it for sure wouldn't take care of the pixels automatically. In newer versions, there's supposedly a tool to automate this, but it isn't working reliably for all users.

I guess, lastly, the noise and spot remover only works on RAW files - is this pretty standard? Because of space limitations, I've been shooting RAW for the money shots and JPEG for the rest, but I would change that in a heartbeat if it meant the pixels would be automagically removed.

I guess once I get a spare minute I'll have to try to run some controlled tests.

**Marc Sabatella** · 11-12-2008, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by Eigengrau

Because of space limitations, I've been shooting RAW for the money shots and JPEG for the rest

With the K100D, shoot PEF but convert to DNG using the free Adobe DNG Converter (which adds lossless compression), and the file sizes aren't a whole lot bigger than JPEG.