A620 Hot Pixels?

[Mr. Magoo]

I picked up an A620 last week.

Now that I took it out for its first real use, I notice it has a hot (red) pixels dead center horizontally, about 1/3 of the way down vertically. (It obviously isn't noticable in all shots, but in those which it is, it now sticks out like a sore thumb since I know i

How common is this? My previous S300 (only 2MP) had no stuck pixels.

Staples apparently has a 100% money back guarantee policy, so theoretically I should be able to return it.

M

[Hawkstone]

I have an a620 and it has no hot ones...

[ktixx]

That is not something you should have to live with. I would return it and get another camera.
Ken

[Mr. Magoo]

Staples swapped out the camera for me. The new one seems ok, but I haven't taken many shots with it. (I didn't notice the problem on the original camera immediately, but one would think it wouldn't have developed a hot pixel after 100 shots or so.)

[Hawkstone]

Hope the one is ok... a good way to check is to point at something all black and set a really long exposure.

[Mr. Magoo]

I did a shot, but I will test again. A very long exposure isn't going to show the problem, since that triggers the built in noise reduction. Dark frame subtraction will hide the defect. Long, but less than 1.3 seconds long.

The second unit appears fine so far.

[Hawkstone]

I was taking some night shots and have now found a single hot pixel.

Having read a little on the internet about this, most articles seem to agree that a CCD that produces a few hot pixels above 1/4 sec exposure are considered to be operating within nomal rates of failure. They seem to suggest that it is rare that a CCD is flawless across all exposure times... Obviously the number of hot pixels should not be large, maybe a few.

My A620 has a single hot pixel at the following shutter speeds:
1/4, .3, .4, .5, .6, .8, 1 sec

It intermitently has a hot pixel at 1/4, at anything below 1/4 and above 1 sec there are no hot pixels, but as Mr Magoo says, 1.3 sec and above has noise reduction applied and therefore is probably masking the problem pixel.

I bought my camera from the internet. I still deciding whether or not I'm best sticking with the devil I know, if the following article is to be believed, I could well end up with a replacement that is worse...

This seems to be a fairly balanced article.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/HOT/HOT.HTM

And another good article
http://webpages.charter.net/bbiggers/DCExperiments/html/hot_pixels.html

[Hawkstone]

Well, I did some more testing and I've now found that low-light, non-flash shots, even way below a 1/4 sec shutter speed are producing the hot pixel. It only seems to show up when it should be a dark or black pixel.

I've decided to send it in for repair.

Hot Pixels are the kind of thing that really gets under your skin, once I knew it was there, I couldn't stop looking at it (and for it)... Maybe that's just the geek in me :)