Hot pixels on the Canon EOS 20D
Tomorrow I’ll be at Canon’s authorized repair-shop to have them look at my 20D. It’s got what I think is hot pixels even at indoors shooting at 1 second shots. Not good. But, being nervous that my camera will be gone without replacement for a while, I am reading up on the subject. There are quite a number of programs and articles on reducing noise in digital images.
Oh, and thank you Alan Briot for your EOS 300D diary. It’s a great read, and introduced me to Lens baby (review). I’ll be experimenting more with my new 100mm f2.8 macro, though. 
But these babies look like very fun toys.
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Hey Niklas!
Strangely, I have the same problem. I Googled for “Canon EOS 20D” and “Hot Pixels”, and found this page. Amazing! The world isn’t that big; I can tell.
But - what about the rest of the story? How did it go? Did they fix your camera; removing all the hot pixels, or what? Today, I’ll be at the authorized repair shop as well - hoping that they’ll fix my camera in a hurry.
PS! Great pictures! Lots and lots of good work in your galleries! Keep up the good work, old friend!
- RoboDoc -
The shop confirmed that it had dead pixles, though said it was only one or two. Took a little while to get it repaired, so I shot a couple of regular rolls during the newyears celebration. Now I’ve got it back and it’s working great (except that with many lens shifts a day it collects the dust in my apartment better than my vacum cleaner
)
Hey all,
Just thought I’d let you know, my 20D passed the 10 000 photo mark yesterday and almost a years use. Recently I noticed pics have 3 hot pixels (red), Which run all the way back to the first time I used iso 3200 intensively at an indoors venue (no lasers present - which is a suspected industry cause)… At iso 3200 does the CCD get too much light resulting in pixels dying? The dead pixels result from different sessions. Two are right next to each other and the other is in another location. Pixel failures originate from intensive shooting at iso 3200 at separate venues (some interesting shots can be obtained with post processing), both indoors shooting with a 550EX flash. I hardly ever overexpose pics, and hardly ever use manual, so it’s hardly been abused.
The dead pixels only show up below iso800 if the noise reduction feature is switched off, but even this is totally unacceptable to me.
I’ve never cleaned the CCD, but it is high time it is done, as it has a few specks. None of the specks ties up with a pixel failure. I’ll be contacting Canon soon.
Does the fix involve replacing the CCD? Did they elaborate?
Was the fix under guarantee?
What constitutes a bad CCD? How many dead pixels did others have ? How many are allowed to fail before it’s deemed a bad CCD?
I’ve also experienced a BG-E2 battery grip failure (& lost that perfect shot of a leopard after a 2 hour wait in the bush). Canon suspect that serial numbers below 96000 are faulty. To check for faulty grip, insert 1x charged battery. Set picture to Raw+L and multiple frame shoot. Switch on image stabilisation if you have it. Hold down shutter button half way for around 5 minutes, keeping the camera awake and focussing constantly. Push shutter button all the way and hold it down for a burst. As the contacts in the battery grip seemt to be poorly plated, they do not carry current well. This means that battery stamina is poor and the camera malfunctions on low current. Requires reset: remove battery & reinsert.
Bob
Johannesburg
South Africa
Hello people !
I’m not very pleased to make the acquaintance of you all like that, but I also have a hot pixel in my 300D :(. I’ve hardly hit the 10000 photographs in a bit more than one year… Since I’m in Tahiti at the moment, I haven’t contacted Canon or the shop from which I bought it (it’s in France and I’ll be there by January). I’m very disappointed by that because when I bought it, I thought that I would be able to use it without a hitch for at least 10 years…
Incidentaly, it appeared on pictures of more than 1sec exposure when I was shooting sunset clouds and the moon. It was 2 days ago and I tested it today with flash interior, ISO100, 1/60s, no problem… I’ll try a night shot later.
I hope we can get our camera repaired (it’s not under warranty anymore for me
)
y’all are nuts…
“I also have a hot pixel in my 300D”
i have more hot pixels than i can count on my 2 year old canon 20D
Doogin, this post is from just a few months after I got the 20D (the 20D was released in September 2004). I took quite a few pictures of the moon yesterday when it was all red because of coming in the earths’ shadow, and during postprocessing of these pictures (200-1600 ISO, 1/60 second - 4 seconds) I noticed especially for the long-exposure shots that there were quite a few green pixels that were stuck in green and red. However, since I shot all of this in raw, the postprocessing software quickly canceled these out, so the picture ended up without interesting green and red stars.
So now my Canon 20D is 2,5 years, it’s got quite a few pixles that become hot even on a chilly danish early march night, but the software can manage much better than it did two years ago. Am I worried about this? Quite definately. Like Gilles I was hoping to get at least as good mileage out of this as out of my EOS 500, 10 years should not be a problem. Now I’m seeing where the problems can come, and yes, I am worried.
But just to make myself clear, I can count the hot pixles. If you’d like to share a picture with your problem Doogin, you’re welcome.
Hey Guys,
Just a few quick comments,
1. Canon cameras dont have CCDs they have CMOS sensors.
2. A little known fact is that for both CCDs and CMOS sensors for every degree in temperatue above 72f the amount of low end noise goes up 4x.
3. a dead pixel is always black, a hot pixel is always on. A mild hot pixel will always glow red, or green, or blue. A bad hot pixel will always show up white.
4. to test for hot pixels put your lens cap on, and take 4 shots ranging from 1/500, 1/60, 1s, and 15s, Your fstop doesnt matter. It is best to do this is RAW, or the highest quality highest resolution JPG. Look through the images at 100% view and look for hot pixels.
5. to test for dead pixels take a blown out picture of a white wall. View it at 100%, and look for individual black pixels.
6. your cameras manufacuter can fix hot or dead pixel very easily, they do not replace the sensor, they remap it and program the camera to ignore the data from the individual hot or dead pixel and use the 8 pixels that border it to interpolate the color that should be there. 1 or 2 pixels of interpolated data out of 8.1 million (rebel xt) or 13 million (5d) really isnt a big deal