PIC: Manchester Eye (And why im on my 4th EOS-20D)

[Tom]

Well I am now on my fourth 20D (not mentioned what happened with my other 2....heres the quick guide:

first = US model no UK warranty
second = Lotsa Hot pixels
third = had taken 6000 pictures yet jessops Trafford Centre blag it as being new, and it had loadsa hot pixels
fourth = passes hot pixel test, and seems generally perfect so far )

Tip: if in manchester, dont mess around with trafford centre branch of jessops, never came out of their happy. Go straight to the World Camera Centre on deansgate, much better jessops branch.

Its not far from the manchester eye and i had to pass it on way back to the met station, took this quick snap:




Not great, but I quite like it for some reason

Cheers

Tom

[iMc]

nice piccy.

what are hot pixels?

[Tom]

well there are dead, hot and stuck pixels...dead never light and are always black, stuck pixels are always on (reg green or blue) same principle as on TFTs....but on digicams hot pixels show up on longer exposures only something to do with the electronic charge on the CMOS or some such (google = win)....basically the longer the exposure the more you get.

Some are to be expected, and are unavoidable otherwise the camera would be like 10k instead of 1k, but the number i had on the other cams was far too many. I have about 2-3 minors on this cam and a single major at 30 seconds ISO 200, which is about right.....on my last camera i had about 35 minors and 10 majors on same settings, which is a p*** take.

[5cupa]

nice gradient of light with perspective

[shiato storm]

$th Camera??!!! thats worse than me with phones! (orange did same thing to me by passing me 're-furb' ones instead of new ones since I'd only just joined!)

so with all these hot pixels etc that keep occuring this can't be that good for those that want a 20d... [i.e. moi!]
and how'd you know jessop's one had shot 6000 before it got to you? and surely that screams trading standards issue - or at least massive reduction in price if they did that since its technically 2nd hand! swines .

so to test hot/dead pix you do long exp. then? if I went to a shop and wanted to make certain the one I got was decent and not full of rubbish pixels [or been used before!] could I do that in the shop in the average time it takes to discuss such an issue with a sales person - and not be fobbed off a dodgy camera just for him to make a sale? say 5-10mins...?

p.s. nice pic, what settings you had there?

[Tom]

Hey Shiato

No crop, just leveled, sharpened and resized. 38mm F5.6 ISO 200 1/40th no flash.

As for testing, thats easy, just take your own compact flash card and do a 30 Second exposure @ ISO 200 and you be the judge of what is acceptable. This is from my new cam:

4th cam....acceptable

This is from the other cam that i deemed as a p*** take:

3rd cam p*** take

Thing is both jessops AND a canon techy said it was right, but i beleive it is excrement. If canon say they test it 6000 times what are we to do?

i could tell from the file name of the pictures. you see how that is 0033 and 0058? that means 33rd and 58th picture....i had reset the counter on the 1 that said 33 but my first pic said IMG_5813.JPG or something. This new cam, sealed said IMG_0032.JPG which is far more like it imo for how much canon would test cameras before sending them out.

Jessops have PCs in all their shops with photoshop elements and compact flash card readers on, so you'll be fine. Definitely buy from a high street store though, as from my hassle if I was dealing with an online company think of the turn around time on 4 cameras.

I dont think jessops are to blame wholy, just make sure you get a good branch. The one on the trafford centre has always seemed poor to me, but the one on deansgate is much larger and it generally seems a lot lot better.

As for someone wanting to buy a 20D, i still think its the camera to get even after these problems, just make sure you test before you buy

[shiato storm]

good advice, cheers

p.s. I opened those links and couldn't spot the difference...just two black screens, couldn't see anything...is that right or am I looking in the wrong place?

[Tom]

make them 100% zoom mate and look closer, 2nd one has loads of red and blue dots all over the show.

first has 3-4 and are a lot harder to spot

[shiato storm]

oh good god!
I found just two [mopderate sized] in the first, one big blue above centre to the right and a red lower left.
the second has lots of little red bits, a white, and a couple big ones...all dispersed about the place.
and these would show up on a normal picture? thats from the sensor (only long exp. I take it)? god thats aweful > mind you there are how many pixels in how small a space, I guess you can expect at least a couple will go wrong...

[Tom]

there are 8 million pixels yea the longer the exposure the worse they get. almost ALL digicams will have them, and most have modes to remove it on long exposure that cant be turned off so you never notice them. I had it turned off for these pics.

They are not visible at all at under like 5 seconds on this cam so nothin to worry about, 2 seconds in photoshop gets rid of them for those few long exposures. Or just turn the long exposure noise reduction on.

For every camera to be completely hot pixel free, the cam would not be 1k but >10k to be fair.

[shiato storm]

ah ok....cool

[joshwa]

Very nice pic do you submit your photos to stock image places? (like alamy etc)?

[Tom]

do you think any of my pictures are worthy of that?

[joshwa]

do you think any of my pictures are worthy of that?

i haven't seem your other pics - but that one above is great! i think you should definitely look into it.

[Howard]

That's a very nice picture!

Here's one of a few "decent" photos I've taken.. I like it, could be better though

[shiato storm]

if you want to shoot stock pictures I'd read up on where's best to go...hundreds, no thousands of people shoot stock for libraries - not saying you'r pics aren't going to be great but there are likely to be hundreds of other great pictures there!
try to do some research into the various picture libraries, the smaller ones might be better for the reason stated...that said more publishers look at the bigger well known libraries...its a case of 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. swings and round-a-bouts...any other phrase you want to use. either way has benefits as well as drawbacks.