[awscreo]

Last night I went out to shoot some stars, and found a ton of white dots in the long exposures. I've shot stars previously but haven't noticed more than a handful of white dots in shadows, but that was with auto noise reduction for long exposures (which adds a dark frame). I guess now I see how much it was filtering out. It didn't bother me before, but after turning the dark frame off I did enjoy the much faster process (don't have to wait twice as long, really starts to add up after going towards 2-3 minute exposures and higher), and would much rather have it off. I'm thinking to send my camera to Pentax for a tune up, has anyone here had a successful outcome with Pentax USA? I bought my K-1 exactly a year ago, but I should be covered with my extended warranty I've purchased right away. I was thinking to send my DFA 28-105 in anyway for a tune up (slight decentering), might as well send the camera with it.

Thoughts?

Please see the original size image with raised shadows and slightly bumped exposure, the effect is easily seen at 100% magnification
TDK13022.JPG - Google Drive

[Adam]

Are you running firmware >= 1.40? They added a software fix for the white dot issue as of 1.4, through the noise reduction setting AFAIK. Not sure there's anything they can do to tune the camera up since the white dots are related to sensor temperature.

Otherwise my recommendation would be to either use the in-camera DFS, perform DFS manually, or use a raw converter that can remove the white dots. There was some discussion of this in the big white dot thread.

[awscreo]

Are you running firmware >= 1.40? They added a software fix for the white dot issue as of 1.4, through the noise reduction setting AFAIK. Not sure there's anything they can do to tune the camera up since the white dots are related to sensor temperature.

Otherwise my recommendation would be to either use the in-camera DFS, perform DFS manually, or use a raw converter that can remove the white dots. There was some discussion of this in the big white dot thread.

I'm on 1.41, and as far as I remember the fix for for jpegs only, still had dots in raws. I was part of that discussion, but that thread is inactive for a while, so I decided to make a separate post as well as post there. I think I remember someone sending camera for a tune up and getting it fixed, but I wanted to see if more people had success also

[Adam]

I'm on 1.41, and as far as I remember the fix for for jpegs only, still had dots in raws. I was part of that discussion, but that thread is inactive for a while, so I decided to make a separate post as well as post there. I think I remember someone sending camera for a tune up and getting it fixed, but I wanted to see if more people had success also

I'm not 100% sure on the in-camera implementation, but as far as I recall DFS does apply to raw files also. Otherwise the wait would definitely not be worth it IMO.

Adam
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[awscreo]

I'm not 100% sure on the in-camera implementation, but as far as I recall DFS does apply to raw files also. Otherwise the wait would definitely not be worth it IMO.

mm, I think you haven't read my post closely I mentioned that I used the noise reduction before (which is the auto DFS function). I believe 1.40 had some other white dot fix for jpegs, that's what I was referring to. But I've seen someone mentioning that they had the issue fixed, so I guess it's not normal to have so many white dots. DFS, while being a good way to get rid of them, isn't ideal as it doubles the exposure times, and I really felt the difference last night. I tried a 7min exposure just to see what it would give me, and I wouldn't want to wait 15 minutes with DFS enabled.

[Adam]

mm, I think you haven't read my post closely I mentioned that I used the noise reduction before (which is the auto DFS function). I believe 1.40 had some other white dot fix for jpegs, that's what I was referring to. But I've seen someone mentioning that they had the issue fixed, so I guess it's not normal to have so many white dots. DFS, while being a good way to get rid of them, isn't ideal as it doubles the exposure times, and I really felt the difference last night. I tried a 7min exposure just to see what it would give me, and I wouldn't want to wait 15 minutes with DFS enabled.

Well I guess we'll have to wait and see if anyone chimes in on the outcome of a repair, but unless they replace the hardware isn't hard to see what could be done.

Have you considered doing DFS manually (by pre-shooting a single dark frame yourself)? That might be the best solution and it would strike a balance between image quality & time invested.

[awscreo]

Well I guess we'll have to wait and see if anyone chimes in on the outcome of a repair, but unless they replace the hardware isn't hard to see what could be done.

Have you considered doing DFS manually (by pre-shooting a single dark frame yourself)? That might be the best solution and it would strike a balance between image quality & time invested.

Yup, I thought about it (haven't tried it before). I'll need to read up on some theory and stuff, not quite sure if I'd need one per night, or one per composition (meaning if I change angle/shutter speed etc I'd need another one).

I know other ff bodies experienced this before, I believe d810 had it but was fixed via free hardware update. If it's a hardware related issue I hope I can fix it under warranty