5D Sensor Clean mode eliminates hot pixels

This urban legend keeps popping up.

Here's what Canon's Chuck Westfall has to say to a poster on the Pro Photo Home forum:

"Let me put it to you this way, Michael: If Canon Inc. wanted to acknowledge something like this, they would have done so publicly in all of the promotional material about the 5D. The fact that they did not ought to tell you something.

I'm glad that you are pleased with your 5D, but for what it's worth, my informal testing shows that there is no difference in the number of hot pixels in several before and after tests."

Canon will remap you hot pixels (free if under warranty) if they bother you.

--
Gary
http://garyjean.zenfolio.com/

What is more amazing is the number of people who claim that have observed the miracle....Just open the shutter in the dark for 20 sec... All you hot pixels will vaporize... You will also lose 10 pounds in just 1 day....

Canon would go on and on about the virtues of the sensor clean function if it really did map out hot pixels.

Just watch, come this fall, one of the main selling points of the 5D replacement will be less viewfinder dust

... what he said is if they "wanted to acknowledge". NOT if they did it.

I've never tried it, so have no opinion on if it works or not.

I've just long been aware that he chooses his words on this carefully enough to leave "wiggle room".

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And the legend continues!! That's the F U N of all this. Enjoy the ride.
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Happy Shooting
regards,
def
http://www.pbase.com/definchdds

the sensor clean function works. Plain and simple.

More important than the legend of the cleaning mode is why doesn't canon make avaliable the sofware for users to map the pixels themselves? Staying without camera for several weeks, and paying a nice ammount for that for something so simple is a complete rip off and makes very little sense.

lol, i bet guys at Canon read this and laugh their heads off;-)

rebel

Tons of cameras have this feature. Some make it easy to access some don't some do it when you turn the camera on. My Nikon had it with a hack someone wrote to fire it up and Nikon never bragged about it.

I think the 5D does recalibrate/map hot pixels.

What the person in the article may be seeing is a true stuck pixel which nothing will fix.

I had hot pixels when I first got it, did the clean sensor and they are gone. No biggy nothing to brag about. All cameras seem to have it, even cheap ones.

And I saw Elvis this morning.

Now correct me if I am wrong here, but are the hotpixels not removed by the camera if you use the noise reduction option for long exposures (you know when the camera takes a second black exposure to subtract from your image)?

I find that I have no hot pixels if I switch on the feature.

I guess we are talking hot pixel concerns with normal, short exposures. Not a particularly visible problem.....

regards,

This is hilarious !!
--
Canon Five D

Gary Jean said:

This urban legend keeps popping up.

Here's what Canon's Chuck Westfall has to say to a poster on the
Pro Photo Home forum:

"Let me put it to you this way, Michael: If Canon Inc. wanted to
acknowledge something like this, they would have done so publicly
in all of the promotional material about the 5D. The fact that they
did not ought to tell you something.

Click to expand...

But what is that something? That Sensor Clean has no effect whatsover on hot pixels under any conditions? Or that it works some of the time, but not consistently enough for Canon to recommend it, because then they'd have to deal with all the complaints about the times that it doesn't work?

Gary Jean said:

I'm glad that you are pleased with your 5D, but for what it's
worth, my informal testing shows that there is no difference in the
number of hot pixels in several before and after tests."

Click to expand...

"Informal testing" means that he tried it once and it didn't work. We don't know anything about the conditions of the test (how many hot pixels were involved?).

FWIW, my informal testing, which was similarly a one-time trial, involved the Dead Pixel Test reading on the 5D giving me over 30 hot pixels, and after running the Sensor Clean mode, this was reduced to something like 2, using the same conditions of exposure. (I no longer have the actual data.) Like Chuck Westfall, I did not repeat this test, and I did not test numerous cameras, but I know that my "informal test" showed positive results, and I was pleased that it did. This was shortly after I bought the camera, and I was thinking of returning it to the dealer or taking it in to Canon, but after using the Sensor Clean mode I no longer had any reason to do so. It really costs nothing to try, and involves very little time, so if you have this problem, why not try it?

Bob

Well, I suppose I could try a magic wand too. Same effect as thinking that a button, the sole function of which is to hold the mirror up and hold the shutter open (after verifying that there is enough battery power), will map out hot pixels. ;-)
--
Gary
http://garyjean.zenfolio.com/

I've tried it; doesn't work. I will send mine in for remapping before the end of its warranty period.

--
Brian. Too much stuff; not enough stuff.

the sensor clean function to eliminate/remap dead/hot pixels works. Just not for every body. There have been numerous people here, literally dozens who tried it and came back cheering about it on this forum. One of them is me. It's worked for me, I got rid of a few hot(or dead? can't remember) pixels after running the sensor cleaning mode.

But it doesn't work for everyone. Some people have tried it and it didn't work for them. Tough luck for them, since they had to get their camera to Canon to get it serviced. And that's probably why it was never made official: it doesn't work for everyone, so Canon can't garantuee its functionality for the full 100%.

But I'm a happy camper. If I bump up against one (these things pop up randomly after usage), I just fix it within seconds.
Those people whose cameras don't do it are just unlucky.

But oh well..trying it out is simple, so this undocumented feature is really worth it as an advise to people who have problems with hotpixels.

Luis Dias said:

Luis Dias wrote:
Staying without camera for several weeks, and paying a
nice ammount for that for something so simple is a complete rip off
and makes very little sense.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it makes a lot of sense.
Canon is a money-driven-business.

They don't give you all the goodies you want, even if they can. They will purposely cripple a model if necessary to stop it from competing with another Canon model (300D got crippled, G7 lacks RAW and other things that defined the G series, no 40D with 10MP en DIGIC III even if they can easily make one). It's all about the money* !!

And if they can earn money by you paying a lot for something really simple, they won't find it really necessary to give you software to do it yourself at home. Nor do they have the need to tell the world that the sensor cleaning mode also removes hot pixels with a lot of 5D bodies. They don't want to tell you that you can fix it yourself if they can get your money for something as simple as that.

I understand your point, but most times mapping is done under warranty and it cost Canon postage to send the camera back to owners. What they earn with this is virtually insignificant if they earn anything at all.

The only reason I see for them to do this is marketing (dead pixels? our cameras do not have dead pixels), and fear of users to screw their cameras with this and them blame them. Two very lousy reasons...

hot pixels appear in the same spot in subsequent pictures. Everybody knows that. People who have tried this say that right after sensor cleaning, subsequent pictures taken at the same parameters were missing the hot pixels.

I was there for the original thread, and I was skeptical at first, but then as the thread moved on, I was intrigued. The OP was cautious enough not to jump to conclusions, and it was noted the conspicuous 2-second-or-so lapse after you press the button and before the shutter actually opens, which doesn't happen with the 20D (the shutter opens instantly).

Well, in any case, the OP asked openly people try this, and most of them, if not all, came to the same conclusion. Now I haven't bothered to check it thoroughly, but I have seen my hot pixels (which, again, appear in the same place in subsequent pictures) disappear after a sensor clean on the 5D. I find this extremely plausible. I don't know if you've tried, but in any case this is very easy to disprove, don't you think?

Gary Jean said:

Well, I suppose I could try a magic wand too. Same effect as
thinking that a button, the sole function of which is to hold the
mirror up and hold the shutter open (after verifying that there is
enough battery power), will map out hot pixels. ;-)
--
Gary
http://garyjean.zenfolio.com/

Click to expand...

It worked for me. That's all I can say.
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