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FORUMS Cameras, Lenses & Accessories Canon Digital Cameras 
Thread started 25 Feb 2012 (Saturday) 18:18
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sensor remapping...

 
swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 18:18 |  #1

can anyone give me a technical explanation of what this actually does to a camera? I've looked online and can't find it anywhere.


my situation...

I bought a 7d and just shot a live show for the first time. low light, so I used 1600 iso. when I went to edit the photographs and zoomed in to 50% on dpp, there were a lot of white dots. an unacceptable amount. I had a 60d before this and shot a number of shows at 1600 and had absolutely no problem with this.

the guys at my camera store agreed and are sending it back to canon to have the sensor remapped. they did say that if it comes back and I am not satisfied, that I can exchange it and go back to a 60d.

I'm not sure what sensor remapping is or how it's supposed to work. any advice on whether this is a good idea/realistic fix?




  
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gjl711
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Feb 25, 2012 19:53 |  #2

Can you post a sample? 100% crop would help as well. ISO 1600 should be pretty clean and white dots doesn't sound like sensor noise. Sensor noise are random colored specks.


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lannes
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Feb 25, 2012 20:02 |  #3

Interesting blog on sensor remapping and experiences at Canon service

http://www.hdcamteam.c​om …er-experience-hot-pixels/ (external link)

you could try the method, where you do a manual self clean for at least a minute with the body cap on, before you send it to Canon


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swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 21:09 |  #4

gjl711 wrote in post #13966971 (external link)
Can you post a sample? 100% crop would help as well. ISO 1600 should be pretty clean and white dots doesn't sound like sensor noise. Sensor noise are random colored specks.

I'm actually not sure what it is...noise is the only word I could think to describe it. here's a sample...

IMAGE: http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c204/careysean/IMG_0356.jpg



  
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swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 21:10 |  #5

lannes wrote in post #13967032 (external link)
Interesting blog on sensor remapping and experiences at Canon service

http://www.hdcamteam.c​om …er-experience-hot-pixels/ (external link)

you could try the method, where you do a manual self clean for at least a minute with the body cap on, before you send it to Canon

thank you. I'll give it a read.




  
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Andrew_WOT
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Feb 25, 2012 21:31 |  #6

This is what I grabbed from inet a while back and what worked for me, sorry can't find original link

Canon Hot(dead) pixel fix (do it in dark room):

Step 1 - Detach the lens from your Canon camera
Step 2 - Put on the camera cap (do not leave your camera open).

Step 3 - Turn your camera on. Go to the menu and select "Sensor cleaning" under the utilities menu.

Step 4 - Turn the dial to select "Clean manually" under the sensor cleaning option.

Step 5 - Turn the dial to select "OK" and then press the "Set" button. The mirror will lock up and the shutter will open. Allow the shutter to remain open for at least 30 seconds. In your case I'd leave it sitting like that for 60 seconds.
Step 6 - Turn your camera off and reattach the lens.

Take a few test shots to see if the problem has been corrected.

Background Info:
---------------
There is really no mystery about sensors having bad pixels- they all do but the cameras map the true dead and stuck pixels out. The confusion comes from newbies that don't understand how hot pixels behave. As explained by others above hot pixels are just pixels that have greater than average dark current. The visibility of dark current scales by exposure time and ISO, and dark current itself increases very rapidly with increased sensor temperature. This means that for long exposures especially at higher ISO settings "hot" pixels will appear to be stuck on: even though they may work OK for short duration low ISO exposures.

It is true that current Canon DSLR cameras create a new bad pixel map whenever the firmware is updated or the manual sensor clean function is selected (I have personally verified this for my 5D2 which has two hot pixels). Newbies may report that this doesn't fix their hot pixels because the function only maps out pixels that are bad enough to appear stuck for exposures of about one second at ISO 100. Pixels that work at this setting are not mapped out because they work fine for typical photographs. If you care most about long exposures then you can increase the number of pixels mapped out by first heating up the sensor by using live view. If the manual sensor clean is selected right after using live view for at least two minutes then the increased sensor temperature will result in more of the marginal pixels appearing as stuck to (and therefore mapped out by) the mapping out routine. Of course this will need to be repeated after every time the sensor is cleaned or the firmware is updated or the marginal pixels will reappear.

If the number of hot pixels is still too much for your liking then you can turn on the long exposure noise reduction function or better yet just use Lightroom or Photoshop to perform the raw conversion. These programs use Adobe's ACR that does a good job of removing hot pixels. This is much preferable to the Nikon method which always applies a crude hot pixel removal routine to the raw data of images with exposures of about one second or longer. This forced Nikon hot pixel suppression is probably why there are less complaints about hot pixels in the Nikon forums but it also removes real small image details like faint stars in the night sky. This is one reason why Canon cameras are often preferred for amateur astronomy.

No I am not a sensor designer- but I doubt that you will get someone like Eric Fossum to answer such a basic question. A great deal of information about sensors is freely available though. There are many papers available from the past workshops that Fossum organizes:
http://www.imagesensor​s.org …hops/Past%20Wor​kshops.htm (external link)

Here are two papers about modeling dark current from a Google search:

http://www.ee.bgu.ac.i​l …APS_DC_Modeling​_Final.pdf (external link)

http://www.imagesensor​s.org …%20Folkerts%20e​t%20al.pdf (external link)

Here is an article by the author of the IRIS astronomical imaging software about Nikon's hot pixel removal processing:
http://www.astrosurf.c​om/~buil/nikon_test/te​st.htm (external link)




  
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swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 21:37 |  #7

thank you. even reading that, though, I'm not sure what it means to remap. is it assigning a nearby color to the pixels? or is it just making them black?




  
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lannes
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Feb 25, 2012 21:39 |  #8

swetsastonic wrote in post #13967327 (external link)
I'm actually not sure what it is...noise is the only word I could think to describe it. here's a sample...

QUOTED IMAGE

That looks more like noise, are you using Canon's DPP ?


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amfoto1
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Feb 25, 2012 21:42 |  #9

Yours is not a hot pixel problem... it's an excessive noise problem. The hot pixel fix won't resolve the problem. Some 7D just seem to have excessive noise, so let the shop send it to Canon and see if it can be fixed. If not, they should exchange it.

One thing you might try before sending it in is be sure to update the firmware to the latest and greatest. Sometimes these things are fixed that way. But I doubt it because I've seen a few 7D that seem to simply be noisy and the only fix is Canon repair or replacement.


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swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 22:13 |  #10

lannes wrote in post #13967442 (external link)
That looks more like noise, are you using Canon's DPP ?


I am. once I converted it to a jpeg, I opened it in photoshop elements and saw it there too.




  
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swetsastonic
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Feb 25, 2012 22:14 |  #11

I appreciate all the responses, everyone.




  
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sensor remapping...
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