kyoshinikon said:
As to #1 I forgot to turn that off :P

As to #2 It is definately not that as I know when it is writing to the buffer. It will do it even if I havent shot anything for a while. Believe me I know when it is writing to the buffer as the green light stays on and the whole camera doesn't fully shut down(all of my cameras do this from time to time).

On this body it shuts everything but the top lcd as if it is writing to the buffer but there is nothing to write. It even does this when there are no cards in the camera and the shutter is locked...

That is a glitch.

Weird. Does the top LCD show all the info or just the remaining shots left on the card? It's normal to have the LCD show remaining shots on card all the time. I'm sure you're aware of this as this is probably not what you're reffering to. We have 2 D7000's and have never had a problem with them.

As to #1 I forgot to turn that off :P

As to #2 It is definately not that as I know when it is writing to the buffer. It will do it even if I havent shot anything for a while. Believe me I know when it is writing to the buffer as the green light stays on and the whole camera doesn't fully shut down(all of my cameras do this from time to time).

On this body it shuts everything but the top lcd as if it is writing to the buffer but there is nothing to write. It even does this when there are no cards in the camera and the shutter is locked...

That is a glitch.

kyoshinikon said:
I finally came across my first problems with the D7000 (actually 2)

#1 whenever the f-stop preview button is accidentally hit my sb900 (when mounted) will have a lengthy dump of the capacitor in where the strobe will be "on" for a few seconds. It was a huge annoyance at the black tie event I shot Friday...

My D90 and D200 don't do this...

Second qualm is that when I turn it off the camera will often keep the top LCD info on for a minute after it is turned off. It seems to do this in warmer weather. My D90, D200, and D80 (as well as the D700, D70ses, D40x, and D3100 I've used extensively don't do this...

#1 sounds like you have modeling light turned on for the preview button. You can disable this in the menu.

#2 If the camera is still writting to the SD card from the buffer when you turn off the camera, the camera will stay on until the buffer is done writing to the SD card.

I finally came across my first problems with the D7000 (actually 2)

#1 whenever the f-stop preview button is accidentally hit my sb900 (when mounted) will have a lengthy dump of the capacitor in where the strobe will be "on" for a few seconds. It was a huge annoyance at the black tie event I shot Friday...

My D90 and D200 don't do this...

Second qualm is that when I turn it off the camera will often keep the top LCD info on for a minute after it is turned off. It seems to do this in warmer weather. My D90, D200, and D80 (as well as the D700, D70ses, D40x, and D3100 I've used extensively don't do this...

SkintBrit said:
Other than the non line of sight/distance benefits of a radio system rather than the Nikon CLS one, are there any other significant advantages to tell my wife when trying to justify the expenditure?

PocketWizards enable ultra-high sync speeds (up to 1/8000th, I think). It's one of PocketWizards' biggest advantages (in addition to the obvious RF benefits) over CLS, at least for me. Not sure about your SB-400 question.

Quick question all, will a Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 attached to an SB400, MiniTT1 combo work, or does the system only work on the high end flashes? I have 2 SB900s and a SB400, and am thinking of getting my first PW's. Just wanted to know do I need 3 TT5's or just 2 for the 900s? Other than the non line of sight/distance benefits of a radio system rather than the Nikon CLS one, are there any other significant advantages to tell my wife when trying to justify the expenditure? :-) Thanks Guys.

Just managed the get myself registered so that I can share my experience with my D7000. Yes, my D7000 did suffered the hotpixel issue. Not really on the video part but in the still image, which was very dissapointed to know that. I realised the problem after I had purchased my tripod and doing some long exposures to capture some stars. At first I was quite excited on the result as in first time doing star shooting. Then I realised something wasn't right. There were actually more than 30 green or red dots captured even in the speed as fast as 4s, don't even mentioned abuot 30s. So I sent my D7000 back to the service centre and the technician updated camera software version, then confirmed that my D7000 CMOS needed to be replaced. Now I had collected back my D7000 after a week. I wouldn't say it is now perfect, but now only have about 4-5 dots slightly visible after 15s. Knowing that hotpixel is quite common in long exposure, but with a new and relatively-not-cheap D7000 that has so many hotpixels even in 4s exposure, to me it is a dissapointment.

Any update to this?
I just received my new D7000 and it does have the hot pixel during long exposure. I took a few photo from 6s to 20s iso100, I notice those hot pixel is actually at the same spot. Wonder if there is no fix to it? or its just problem with some of the D7000?

Hi one51, did Nikon solve your problem?

I have had the same problem, noticed in the first days of shooting, other than that I've also had few hot pixels (real ones) one hot pixel in darker (not black or extra dark) videos and strange "drops" (like the ones seen on few Pentax K5) using medium/long exposures and small apertures.

I've serviced the d7000 and it should be coming back to me in the next days.. all they did (standing to what they told me) is calibrating the sensor.. :S
I'm quite sure I will still have this 'snow pixels' and the drops.

studio460, thanks for the advice. From their mail they already seem ready to service the camera. It's basically useless for long exposures unless I want to put up with the NR feature every time, but that doesn't even help until >10s. I will ask that the sensor (or entire body) is definitely replaced, not just "calibrated" somehow.

As a semiconductor test engineer I know exactly the reasons for this kind of thing. And the tests that would find it (on a probably-very-expensive-tester, or done manually by a person) take the longest time = therefore the most likely to be removed too early, in order to ramp volume production. :-)

one51:

The Nikon USA support page includes this statement: "If these spots are seen on images photographed under normal conditions (bright light with exposure times shorter than 1/4 second) then the camera may need to be sent in to a Nikon Service Center for evaluation." If you can produce bad pixels at 1/4-second, then Nikon is on record for "fixing" it. I've actually seen worse from a D7000 at another forum (his photos looked like pictures of a snowstorm). I haven't tested my D7000 at exposures longer than 0.8 seconds, but up until then it seemed fine (I have already upgraded my firmware). Yours appears far worse.

My advice: demand a sensor replacement from Nikon. According to others here, they've been known to replace sensors for less.

See my 2nd post about the long exposure NR, it works, but only at >10s exposures and it's a pain. I did only update the firmware once.

Well, of course my other option is repair ;-). Actually I did get a response from Nikon US that I need to send the camera in for warranty service. Now I need to determine if I can send it here in Germany, or only back to the States.

Anyway I think it's good to know that if the sensor is *this* bad, Nikon will do a repair! I am curious to see in the next weeks if others on the forum have a similar long-exposure issue. Good to see that your results are better than mine, so it's not all D7000s that are affected, only some.

I see what you're talking about, Dave. It would be interesting to know whether dark frame subtraction (long exposure NR) would take out what you're seeing. You won't be able to effectively remove those bright spots easily from jpegs in post. Did you try reupdating the firmware after using your sensor for a while? Put it in liveview for 5 minutes or so and then rerun the firmware update. My first time updating didn't get rid of the two stuck pixels I had in video but the second time did.

It seems to me that your options are to either use long exp NR or post-process with a raw converter that has a demosaic routine that will watch out for this issue and automatically remove them (I use Lightroom 3 and it does—at least here in the US it has a 30-day trial).

A side note, I noticed some red fringing with long exposures / high ISO and my 18-200mm lens. But with body cap, instead of a lens, that disappeared. I guess it was slight light leakage around the lens cap or elsewhere in the lens body.

Thanks, Jonny... looks like you have less problems, though at only a 2s exposure it's harder to see.

Check out these two, if I get the links right:
30s, ISO 1600
20s, skyline view, ISO 100 (!)

Zoom 100% on the water (brigher parts) in the skyline pic, you will see "stars..."

Waiting now for Nikon's response on those images.

Dave

Here's the series you asked for, Dave. I have to admit it's the first time I've shot my lens cap. I'm not going to make a habit of it. ;-)

Settings: 2s shutter speed (and f/11 for anyone who's counting...), jpg normal large straight out of camera, standard picture control, auto WB, D-lighting off (that may be something to check), ISO NR off, long exposure NR off, sRGB (can't see how that would make much difference).

I'm really impressed by this performance—I expected more noise/hot pixels than I see. I saw no hot pixels at ISO 1600 but after seeing a big one at ISO 6400 center-right (a group of two red ones), I went back and it is visible. Amp noise is starting to be visible in the lower left corner of the frame at ISO 1600, and there are (expectedly) some hot pixels at ISO 6400.

ISO 100
ISO 400
ISO 1600
ISO 6400
edit: fixed broken links

Can you show images of what you're seeing at low ISO?

Hi Jonnyapple, I tried it without the long-exposure NR, in "Normal" .jpg mode, when doing the lens-cap-on tests (though results were similar in RAW mode). Standard camera settings, no post-pro. So, try 30s exposure, ISO range like 100/400/1600/6400, no NR, lens cap (or even body cap) on.

Afterwards I tried it *with* the long-exposure NR, which does nearly eliminate the effect. BUT there are a few problems with that: 1) we're not just talking about noise, but hundreds of hot pixels (and with low ISO at that); 2) I see the problem (faintly) starting at 1/4s exposure, very bad by a couple seconds, and long-exposure NR only starts working at 10s+; 3) who wants to wait double the exposure time before starting the next shot.

Just tested my D90 (also without NR), it has about 2 pixels with slight problems at high ISO; at low ISO it's black as a clean chalkboard. Whereas the D7000 has hundreds bad even at low ISO.

I'll probably call US Nikon Support today and discuss with them, let's see how that goes. Curious to hear your results - thanks!

Dave

Hey, Dave. Welcome to the forum. Do you have long exposure noise reduction on or off? Also, what do you use to post process? I can try some test shots for you, but I'd like to have the same settings you did.

Hi all,

Here's an interesting dilemma, not sure if it's the same sensor issue but it's truly horrible. I upgraded D90 to D7000 in December, loved the D7000's clean output even at 3200. But last week I took some night shots in Singapore with 10-30s exposures at ISO 100. When I looked at the first shot on the camera, I thought, "weird, the sky is completely hazy, but the camera is picking up faint stars!?" The noisy pixels were that bad. Even in the (black) water and on moderately lit buildings, I could see the noisy pixels, which stayed in the same spot even when the scene was recomposed.

There are a ton of "warm" pixels... ranging from barely visible to a gray spot. Longer exposure makes it even worse. I experimented with lens cap on later, no change, some are visible as colored spots (nearly fully stuck on?) even at low ISO. Firmware upgraded the next day; no change.

Anyone have bad experiences with long exposures? Could someone who has the "hot pixels video mode" problem try this out, 10-30s exposure with lens cap on / varying ISO? 30s with ISO 800, lens cap on looks like a checkerboard of colored dots even at low or no magnification!! SN in 3046xxx range, bought from BB.

Debating what to do. Unfortunately I bought my camera over Xmas in the US, but I live in Germany, so probably no warranty service available here :-/

-Dave

Forum folk,

I'm not a Nikon noob, and yet I'm having a noob problem. I just upgraded tot eh D7K, and though I've installed Nikon's questionable native software, my camera won't connect to my computer (macbook.) Possibly connected is the fact that my batter won't read as fully charged even though I've charged it fully. Anybody have similar problems with a new D7000? Is there a very obvious step I am missing somewhere?

Thanks guys. If the results work, it's a fix in my book. :) I appreciate the responses. Unless I find any other showstoppers, I think this puts it solidly at the top of the list again.

---Bill

Bill Tuttle said:
So folks, has this been fixed with the update? There's 19 pages here of comments on the pixel problem. And less than one page of comments on the Firmware update thread. With as many people complaining about this issue, I'd think there'd be more talk about whether or not this is a real fix. What's the word? I'm looking to invest in a DSLR and the D7000 is the top of my list except for this issue.

I agree. The firmware update fixed my problem in one-pass. Since the upgraded firmware, the stuck-pixel problem is no longer an issue with the D7000.

Hi Bill,

Welcome to the forum. From what I saw more people seemed to make comments on the homesite (nikonrumors.com) when the firmware fix was announced than in this forum thread. As far as I could tell most if not all comments were favorable although I didn't read everyone's comment. I did notice that several of us here commented that the fix was a success.

Some people had to run the firmware update more than once for it to "catch". As for me, I had one stuck blue pixel that showed on video when recording in dark areas and using ISOs greater than 200 and High ISO Noise reduction ON. The firmware fixed that although most of my recording is in good light anyway. Whether it's a true fix vs. a bandaid; I don't know and sorta don't really care. I'm happy with the result. Others may chime in here with further comments.

Welcome aboard.

So folks, has this been fixed with the update? There's 19 pages here of comments on the pixel problem. And less than one page of comments on the Firmware update thread. With as many people complaining about this issue, I'd think there'd be more talk about whether or not this is a real fix. What's the word? I'm looking to invest in a DSLR and the D7000 is the top of my list except for this issue.

FNJ2C said:
I'm with mike nikon needs to get a fix now or recall what is out there.what is takeing so long.And thanks mike for your posts.

Hi FNJ2C,

Let's keep our optimism up (grandpa was down on my meds yesterday / :-0 /), and hope that Nikon gets its collective head out... ah, in the right place.

Truly a week for me to wish my best to all, Seasons' Greetings!

Mike