Problem with Camera

[tjcamro]

Hey everyone I have a Sony Alpha 100 and I have been noticing the past few times that I have been out shooting at night that when I come home and look at my photos on the computer they look good except for these white dots that are showing up all throughout the photo. It doesn't matter what ISO setting I am using they just show up. When I edit the photos and zoom in to fix them I see lots of red, black, blue, yellow crosses and when zoomed out they create the white dots that are visible in the photo.

Any ideas? I'm hoping that the camera isn't losing pixels because I dont have the money to replace it right now.

[sk66]

Those are probably what are known as "hot pixels". Every camera has them. It is magnified by shooting dark scenes w/ longer exposures.

[tjcamro]

So the only thing to do is go in an fix them with the editing feature?

[sk66]

The things that aggravate hot pixels are. In order of relevance.

Long exposures (sensor heat buildup)
High ISO (general noise amplification)
Multiple exposures (sensor heat buildup)
Ambient temperatures (sensor heat buildup)

Whatever you can do to minimise these factors will help minimise the hot pixels.
Otherwise it's post removal. Some cameras will do this in camera, but the results are mixed and it REALLY increases exposure times and even adds to the sensor heat buildup issue.

Here's a site with a photoshop action that seems to do a better than average job of mapping out hot pixels. I haven't tried it though.