Pixel Mapping - Olympus
Over time digital camera's can (and do) develop pixels that are either permanently dark (dead pixels) or permanantely bright (stuck). Don't confuse this issue with hot pixels which become apparent on long exposure, low light photography.
Depending on what you intend to do with the photo's and the number of pixels affected it will determine whether this presents a problem or not.
A single dark or bright pixel will be visible when viewing the image at full size on a monitor. In a lot of cases, you won't see the effects of these pixels on the finished print.
But, you may prefer to elliminate these troublesome pixels! There are a couple of ways to effectively deal with the issue:
- Use the clone tool in your favourite picture editing application. Effective, but time consuming - especially if you have a lot of images to process.
- Pixel Mapping - Elliminate the bad pixels (by mapping them out) and replace them with values interpolated from adjacent pixels. The advantage of this method over manually editing is once done you won't have to manually edit each image. Most camera's will need to be sent back to the manufacturer for this process.
The Olympus 4/3's DSLR's (E-300, E-330, E-500, E-400) have this functionality built into the user interface. This negates the costly (time, not just money) exercise of sending your camera back to the manufacturer to get repaired.
I had to use the pixel mapping on my E-300 after about 12 months of operation. Six months down the track no further problems!