Blackmagic Forum

I returned my original camera because of banding and although that problem has been fixed I now have a new problem with hot/stuck pixels. I mapped them out in AE... Forty one!

Here is a link to some footage showing four of the stuck/hot pixels.

BM took it in for testing and said this was within their tolerances. I bought the camera for a feature film and I'm worried these pixels could cause a problem if it ever got shown on a cinema sized screen especially if I crop the image to reframe.

What do others think? Is this acceptable?

Do they go away with chroma denoise?

Scott P wrote:Do they go away with chroma denoise?

I'm not sure this is the direction I want to go at the moment I really want to know if the camera is acceptable with 41 hot/stuck pixels as BM say and will this cause problems further down the line. I could by fixing it in post actually make matters worse as my fear is a post house could say we could have fixed it much better, its going to cost lots to fix OR its just unusable. The last thing I want to do is try to fix it by noise reduction and putting the whole film out of focus to get rid of the stuck/fixed pixels.

I don't know much about quality control in a professional field and want to know if I shoot a feature film with 41 hot/stuck pixels and send it into the professional arena Could the film fail their quality control and be deemed to be unacceptable as a digital cinema package?

I have had this on most of the digital cameras that I have owned at one time or another. But, was always able to perform a mapping procedure in camera to get rid of them. The only ones that didn't have this problem for me was in the tube camera days.

I wish BMD would provide us with an in-cam pixel masking function because sooner or later they will start showing up.

Mark2929 wrote:
if I shoot a feature film with 41 hot/stuck pixels and send it into the professional arena Could the film fail their quality control and be deemed to be unacceptable as a digital cinema package?

Yes.

Animotion,

Could you explain why you think this?

I've had 3 BMPC4ks, the first had 100 hot pixels, the second had 40, and the third one 20, and they all had FPN. BMD can't get it together. Broad daylight, shooting at ISO 200, and still FPN!

4K-Jay wrote:I've had 3 BMPC4ks, the first had 100 hot pixels, the second had 40, and the third one 20, and they all had FPN. BMD can't get it together. Broad daylight, shooting at ISO 200, and still FPN!

What I was told was hot/stuck pixels are on ALL the 4k cameras so getting a replacement could leave you in a slightly better or worse position. Just wish I knew where this leaves me in the professional arena. My planned film has 31 cast and 10 crew. Should I risk it or just give up on making the film. No way I can afford an Alexa Sony f55 or even the rental for these.

I've spoken to BM re the camera and feel re assured now that the 41 hot/stuck pixels shouldn't be a problem if the film was projected 4k on a big screen. They are also working on fixing this as a firmware update.
Guess I can relax now.