On Sat, 13 Mar 2004, Dr. Shaun Canning wrote: > Bucky and Gonz, > > The pixels turned out to be 'hot' rather than 'dead'. I ran a test > through a little program called 'Dead Pixel Test' (freely available > on the web). An image is taken with lens and viewfinder caps on and > then run through the program. When I first ran an image, it showed > 132 hot pixels, 0 dead. Then, I turned on 'noise reduction' in the > custom functions menu, and ran another image. The number of 'hot' > pixels dropped to 2. > > It would appear that the 'hot' pixels were noise, and as such the > *ist D's noise reduction function should take care of most of the > 'hot' pixels.
It sounds like you ran the test with the camera at a long exposure setting. You should run it at all exposure settings. My first *ist D had a number of hot pixels. I was noticing them in exposures of 1/125 and faster. I didn't know about the hot pixel test, so I just shot frames with a black body cap on from 1/4000 down to 4". The hot pixels showed up even at 1/4000. I bought locally, so I just returned the camera to my retailer and picked up a different one. They sent the camera back to Pentax. Being able to do this was well worth the $100 extra that I paid by buying locally. alex
