Need advice regarding dead pixels

kalgra · Jun 16, 2016

So I purchased my Canon 6d about 5-6 months ago and have used it allot since I got it. I have started to notice with some of my long exposer (20-30sec) night shots that there are about 6-8 hot pixels. The camera is still under warranty but as I am new to digital photography I'm not sure if this is a big problem or not. I can easily remove them in post which I don't mind because Im usually in PS removing dust spots or cloning out unwanted objects anyway.

Im not really sure if this is normal or why this has happened. If its possible it happened due to the sensor getting to hot that would be when I'm using live view for manual focusing shooting extreme macro for extended periods say 3-5 hours.

If I am careful not to allow the sensor to get real hot anymore using live view do you guys think its worth me sending it into Canon for however long that takes to have it fixed or is this just a fairly common thing that come with heavy use on any digital camera? Ive probably already got 30k+ shutter actuations on this camera.

Hope my question makes sense.

KmH · Jun 17, 2016

Yes. It is a common thing.

With 20.2 million pixels some of them won't work right, and there is nothing Canon nor any other digital camera maker can do about that.

robbins.photo · Jun 17, 2016

If it's under warranty, yes, absolutely, send it in and have it fixed.

john.margetts · Jun 17, 2016

I seem to remember that when I bought my DSLR, there was a note as to how many dead pixels were deemed to be acceptable and thus were not covered by the warranty.

kalgra · Jun 17, 2016

Thanks for all the responses. I spoke to a Canon Support rep and she said I could send it in but it sounds it may net be necessary. I look into any documentation I may have that state the acceptable number of dead pixels. Im not concerned with the ones I have but I just want to be sure its not an indicator of a possibly larger issue on the horizon.

Again thanks so much for your replies!

kalgra · Jun 18, 2016

So I did some reading on the interwebs and it appears I was mistaken with my description of "dead" pixels. From what I ready dead pixels are black not white,red,green, etc. I read that what I have are "stuck" pixels. I also read that I could run a sensor cleaning through the cameras menu system to resolve so I did that and sure enough it took care of them.

I tested this by first taking a couple sample images at 8 and 20 seconds with the lens cap on then ran the sensor "cleaning now" option from the sensor cleaning menu and repeated the 8 and 20 second exposures with the lens cap on. I compared the before and after sets in PS at 200% magnification and they are indeed gone in the second set.

Im really surprised that the Canon support rep I spoke with didnt know about this and suggested I send in the camera. Anyway hopefully this helps someone else in the future with the same problem.

Thanks again to all who responded.