Okay-- so I shot some concert photos the other day w/ my 5D and 24-70 2.8L (ISO 1600 1/100sec f2.8) and in all of the shots there are these 2 red dots in the same spot that I have had to freaking clone out of all of these shots. Is this a hot pixel or a dead pixel,, or an angry pixel (well 2 angry pixels?) any ideas? is it permanent? anything that can fix it? I second shoot for other people sometimes and I don't want to be leaving files with red spots all over them! very irritating.

thanks a lot!

Kate

Kate,

I had the same problem with one of my old 5d's. Because I shot raw, Adobe Bridge and ACR would automatically detect them and clone them out which was nice. So to me they weren't really a big deal. Sorry I am not much help, lol.

I have been using aperture or lightroom and I can see the dreaded dots in both!

*pulling hair out*

Kate

If you have high Iso noise reduction on your camera, this could be the cause.

When you take the photograph with a high iso, the camera then takes another photo to see where the noise is, it then applies noise reduction to this (yes even with a raw file) and you get a reduced noise image.

The downside of this is sharpness, you lose some of it. Another downside is that it's not infallible. The hot pixels are possibly a result of the noise reduction in camera, I know Canon tend to reduce noise automatically with every Iso, hence the creamy skin! normally it's pretty undetectable but when it has to work hard, low light, high Iso it can and generally does fail.
If you can turn off the High Iso noise reduction, I would.
I know you can with Nikon, not too sure about Canon, perhaps someone with a Canon could enlighten us with a menu setting please?

By the way, if you are using CS3 Adobe Camera Raw to process your files, then there is a healing tool you can use to get rid of spots and the like.
Open all of the files in ACR and select all. Use the spot healing tool one the first one and if you have all of the other photos selected then it will automatically apply to every one.

I use this with dust spots on the sensor, it just magic's them away with out all of the huffle in photoshop

Hope this helps

thanks-- I will check for the "reduce noise ay high ISO" setting and turn it off if I can. I have been using aperture but am in the midst of a switch to lightroom--anyone know if there is a way to have this same magic happen in lightroom? :-)

thanks,
Kate

What version of Lightroom are you using? When I import photos to Lightroom I can see my dead pixel (red one mid photo third of the way down), but as soon as the previews are rendered it is gone - never see it again. Are you rendering the previews? You can still see it? It should behave just like ACR.

You can send the camera into the manufacturer and they will map the dead pixel out so you don't have to worry about it. Not sure how much this costs. Let us know if you do it.

JT

I will...I am still experimenting to see if there are any settings I can chage in camera t fix it, but if that fails I may try to see if there is a way to have lightroom dump it (i use 1.4.1--just switching over from using aperture, so not totally familiar/haven't gotten a workflow down yet...)

thanks for all the info/suggestions, you guys are the best.

Kate

Glad you posted this, I had this happen last week. I noticed it was only in high ISO shots as well.

yeah-- high iso is the culprit. I didn't notice any difference changing my camera settings, and there is no way for me to avoid high iso shooting sometimes, so I will have to count on post. I don't have time/money to send my camera back to canon right now. James, you are correct though, once the previews are rendered in LR the red dots are gone from view. Just one more reason to be glad to be moving on from Aperture then.

thanks guys,
Kate