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Hi everyone,
When I recently took pictures for the prayer and Bible time assignment, I noticed they had a large number of conspicuous red, green, and white hot pixels in them. I haven’t had any problems with that recently, but they all just popped up in these photos. I looked back at what the Foundations in Photography course said about them, and found that it said that they should only be an issue with super long shutter speeds multiple seconds long. However, I was always shooting at less than 1 second shutter speed in these. Does anyone know what may be causing them and if there is anything I can do to keep them from showing up? Should I be worried that my camera has a problem? Here is a sample of some of the pictures I am referring to before I removed all the hot pixels (they are zoomed in a lot to show the areas of concentrated hot pixels).
-CodyAttachments:
Hot pixels are a common problem with old sensors. Yours, a Nikon D80, is a camera from back in 2006 to 2008, so it’s at least 13 years old.
There isn’t much you can do to prevent the problem – Hot pixels are just sensor pixels that get noisier as the sensor ages. Some cameras (I don’t know about the Nikon D80) have in-body pixel mapping or long exposure noise reduction settings that can help. I know most Canons have this, but again, I don’t know about Nikons.
Beyond that, with good hot pixel removal software, you can get rid of them easily.
Darktable’s hot pixel tool works very well, though I imagine other professional-level photo editors such as Lightroom or Affinity have good tools for the purpose also.Thank you for the help @cheesestick. The camera I use is actually my parents camera, so it is pretty old and well-used. The camera as other disadvantages due to its age besides the hot pixels. It may just be time for me to get my own camera that is newer.
I did find in my camera’s shooting menu that it does have a long exposure noise reduction setting that I had turned off. I have it turned on now. Thanks for directing me to that setting.
I have just been using the Photos editing program that comes with Apple computers, and all it has is a basic retouch tool, so I was having to remove the hot pixels one by one. Very tedious, as you can imagine.
-CodyHey Cody, it looks like you got some helpful advice from William on this, but if you’re on the webinar tomorrow night and have more questions on this topic you’d like James to address, just pop a question in the chat!
Hi Cody @samuelwest, I tried to do some research on this today but wasn’t coming up with much of anything new to add to the conversation, necessarily
It appears that hot pixels are caused from long exposures, high ISOs, and sensor degradation. You’re probably dealing with the last two.
Do those hot pixels show up in the exact same location from picture to picture, or not? Do you see them at all ISOs? Do you see them when photographing subjects under lots of light, like in the middle of the day? What photo editing software do you use?
Thank you for your research Mr. James. I appreciate your taking time researching about it.
It does seem like the pixels are showing up in the same arrangement and the same area of the photo each time.
I have never seen any hot pixels in high lighting scenarios, and even in the prayer/Bible study pictures I took, I could tell that there were less of them visible in the brighter photos.
In the pictures I attached above to show the hot pixels, I was shooting at ISO 100. I haven’t tested to see if the hot pixels would show up at higher ISOs, but I would assume they would only get worse with more grain.
I just use the Apple computer editing program called Photos.
-Cody
It appears that hot pixels are caused from long exposures, high ISOs, and sensor degradation. You’re probably dealing with the last two.
From personal experience, the other thing that can worsen the effect is usage during a session -i.e., you will notice that the 100th picture you take in quick succession will have hotter pixels than the 1st. Of course this is anecdotal and may not always be true.
Ok, @samuelwest, because the spots are showing up in the same place, it means you either have dead pixels or stuck pixels, probably not hot pixels. You can read this article to determine which type you have: https://photographylife.com/dead-vs-stuck-vs-hot-pixels
The reason you have them is probably because it’s an old camera and the sensor is simply wearing out. And sadly, there’s not much you can do about it. However, that above article does provide some ideas for how to deal with them.
Hope that helps!
Yes, very helpful. Thank you again Mr. James and @cheesestick for your advice!
-Cody
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