Despite what the name implies, hot pixels are anything but attractive. Sometimes dubbed as dead, stuck or stray pixels, these are often times detected when a dark image has been captured or while looking at a night sky time lapse. A hot pixel show up as red or white dots and are best seen against the contrast of a dark backdrop. They can ruin hard work and are most often remedied by sending the camera back in to the manufacturer for repair. Today we’re going to take a look at how you can fix this annoyance simply with the settings in your camera.

You want to be sure to cover your camera’s sensor with the body cap and take the extra step of then covering your body cap with a towel, jacket, whatever will help to ensure that ZERO light leakage makes it through to your camera’s sensor. In order for this trick to work, it must be pitch black. The mirror will flip up and the camera should expect to read all black. If there are any red or white pixels detected, the camera will remap them. Wait at least a minute, turn your camera off and then take a few shots of dark images to test out whether or not the dead or hot pixels are still there. Try this again if they are before resorting to sending the camera back in to get serviced.

Emm from cheesycam.com was helpful and proposed this as a Tuesday Tip. He wrote up a blog post on it, “09Apr Fixing Random Hot or Dead Pixels” A very big thank you to Emm for this one! If you guys have questions or suggestions, be like Emm and let them be heard!