My apologies in advance for posting an off-topic photography message on what seems to have transformed into an operating system debate list ;-)
I'm currently in the research phase of an article on image sensors, to appear in EDN's September 16 issue. Coincidentally, as some of you may remember from my post of a few weeks back, I recently discovered I had a number of hot pixels on my *ist D. I was on the phone interviewing Foveon yesterday, and they expressed shock at the number of failing pixels I'd found, and the allowable pixel defect rate this implied Pentax was accepting from Sony. Was Foveon TRULY shocked? Or were they just trying to get me to convert to Sigma gear? ;-) That's the point of this email. Those of you with *ist Ds, will you mind downloading and running the free 'Dead Pixel Test' utility from Starzen Technologies (yes, only supporting operating systems from the alleged Evil Empire of Redmond, according to one of the more vocal and annoying current members of this list) here: www.starzen.com/imaging/deadpixeltest.htm Capture the image at a 1/10th of a second shutter speed, please (the *istD activates noise reduction, if you've enabled it in your camera, at slower speeds), with the eyepiece covered, make sure you capture a TIFF file (JPEG artifacts may give 'false positives), run the utility on the TIFF with the default hot and dead pixel threshold values (so comparative results are meaningful), and send me your results. I'll consolidate everyone's feedback and post it to the list in a few days. Below are my results using the utility's default threshold settings (60 for hot pixels, 250 for dead pixels), as FYI: [DeadPixelText] Version=1.0 Description= FileType=TIFF NumBadPixels=14 0=Hot,286,340,93 1=Hot,286,341,67 2=Hot,2568,453,67 3=Hot,2567,454,82 4=Hot,2568,454,118 5=Hot,2569,454,81 6=Hot,2568,455,68 7=Hot,2162,1117,92 8=Hot,1666,1213,114 9=Hot,264,1391,109 10=Hot,833,1691,75 11=Hot,832,1692,76 12=Hot,833,1692,142 13=Hot,833,1693,76 The first two numbers after 'Hot' are the coordinate locations of the pixel, while the the third is the luminance value measured. Since the lenscap was on during the exposure, the value should ideally be 0. Thanks in advance! ============================== Brian Dipert Technical Editor: Mass Storage, Memory, Multimedia, PC Core Logic and Peripherals, and Programmable Logic EDN Magazine: http://www.edn.com 5000 V Street Sacramento, CA 95817 (916) 454-5242 (voice), (617) 558-4470 (fax) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit me at http://www.bdipert.com
