Nikon D100 – Hot pixel removal utility and instructions

A short summary of the german article about the “Q50ImageAdjust” Utility to re-map dead or hot pixels. It may come unexpected: small red, sometimes also blue pixels appears on your latest nightlife pictures and there is just no way to aviod this. The reason: “Dead Pixels”, sometimes called “Hot Pixels” on your CCD.

From the technical point of view, it is “normal” to have such dead pixels, keep in mind, that your D-SLR may come with 6 – 12 Million pixels. So, if you leaving your prefered digicam dealer with a brandnew D-SLR, this D-SLR already comes with dead or hot pixels, but there are “mapped” as such a unusable pixel (or disabled) by the vendor already.

Sooner or later, some more of your millions of pixels on the CCD will “die” (or become “hot”), so, the problem is now to disable (or map) this dead pixels also as unusable.

Most vendors of D-SLR’s (like Nikon) offer this so-called “Re-Mapping” as service, but you have to send your D-SLR to them.

In the case of the Nikon D100, a small tool is available on the web to do such a re-mapping on your own (note: i’m note the author and i dont know the author…). But take care: you may destroy your camera, the CCD or portions of it, so, if you like to be on the save side, just send your D-SLR to the vendor.

btw: A common mistake here is to identify this “small red dots” as dead pixels instead of the result of typical picture noise.

If you doesnt have a Nikon D100 or you like to get an idea, how many dead pixels you have (or you just like to make sure, that your red pixels are no noise), you may use the following tool for this:

• StarZen Dead Pixel Test

If the result of such an analysis is showing dead pixels and you’re a lucky owner of a D100, you can use special tool to do this re-mapping on your own.

But first, read carefully:

• YOU DOING THIS ON YOUR OWN RISK !
• You may destroy the camera, the CCD or portions of this !
• IN NO EVENT WILL I BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL OR OTHER CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES FOR ANY USE OF THIS WEB SITE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY LOST PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.IF YOU CANT LIFE WITH THIS, DONT CONTINUE and send the camera to your prefered support partner / vendor.

Software, Q50ImageAdjust / Q0050 Image Adjustment:

• Link removed, please leave a comment for download details.

Technical Requierements to use the Software:

• external power supply  – You cant use the software without this.The original Nikon power supply is ~ $90. If you cleaning your CCD from time to time, you will need this sooner or later.
• PC running Windows 2000 / XP. I’m not aware of a Mac OS Version of this.
• USB connection between your D100 and the PC – just use the cable delivered with the D100 for this.

As i know, this tool is not working with any other Camera. If you have other experiences, just post a comment.

Camera Setting:

• manual exposure mode (“M”)
• manual focus (“M”)

Steps in detail:

• 1) Set “USB Transfer” to “Mass Storage” (not PFP)
• 2) Set exposure mode to “M”
• 3) Set auto focus to “M”
• 4) Put the lens cap on your objectiv (IMPORTANT: avoid any kind of light falling into the camera)
• 5) Connect the external power supply
• 6) Cover up the hole camera (again: any kind of light insight of the camera must be prevented, otherwise the result may become falsified and this may damage the CCD)
• 7) Turn on the camera

If you’re not sure about the connection between your D100 and the PC, you can check this using “Nikon Capture Control”:

• Launch “Q50ImageAdjustENG.exe“, enable “CCD Defect Compensation“, but DISABLE all other options:

• 9) Click “Start” .

Some messages may appear:

The program is now taking 3 shots and will analyse the result to find dead pixel.

The next dialog is showing you the result (amount and position of possible, dead pixels):

Now, it’s up to you to disable this dead pixels or not, but dont be confused by the “unusual” translation of the next question: at this time, the result IN NOT YET written to the EEPROM of your camera:

If you choose “OK”, the program will save the result to the EEPROM of your D100 which will disable this pixels for further shots.

That’s it. Hope it is working for you too, it would be great if you post your experiences with this as comment. Thanks.