Joseph Burford Photography

Canon EOS 50D Hot Pixels

Recently I did a spot of night time photography including some time lapses with my 50D, on examining the photos a few days later I noticed a nasty little red spot on one of the images. Closer inspection found me three of the little blighters, so it looks like I’ve got myself some hot pixels on the sensor.

Above is a 100 percent crop of a 4 second exposure with no lens, this is the most prominent hot pixel, click on the picture for the full size image. If you look at the file at 100 percent, (ala a pixel peeper – LOL) you will see them. It’s pretty much Top Middle, Middle Left, Bottom Left.

I’ve tried the various methods around the place that suggest the sensor can be remapped by the camera, all to no avail. Seeing it’s only 8 months old, today I dropped it off for a warranty claim and it’s gone to Sydney.

Wish me luck, took me 6 weeks to get the last camera back that I sent to Canon for repairs.

Kids – May 2009

Some pics of the kids during May 2009, put together using Animoto.

Heatwave in Adelaide

As is obvious to everyone living here in Adelaide, South Australia, we are the middle of a fairly decent heatwave.

I’m going to use this post to add links to stories and news items as they happen, aiming to update this post every few hours.

* Tuesday 27th January 2009
Adelaide suffers biggest scorcher in 5 years
Power restored to 10,000 homes

* Wednesday 28th January 2009
Power restored to most of SA
Enough power for SA heatwave: ETSA
Hotter heatwave than 2008 expected
Adelaide suffers through hottest day in 70 years
More power cuts in SA
Power outages hit Woodville Gardens, Banksia Park

* Thursday 29th January 2009
Power cut to 16 areas of SA
Adelaide swelters through hottest night
Buckled rail lines fixed
Employers urged to go easy in the heat
Trams only running in peak-hour
Thousands in SA without power
Adelaide likely to break heatwave record
Power, transport networks hit by heatwave
Adelaide temperature hits 43 degrees

* Friday 30th January 2009
Heatwave states brace for more power, transport outages
Fire threat adds to heatwave chaos
Buses replace trams in SA heatwave
No relief from heatwave chaos
Blackouts are inevitable: ETSA
Load-shedding begins in SA
Groaning electricity network ‘exposes need to invest’
Nemmco – Unplanned Electricity Interruption in South Australia
170,000 affected by power outage Thankfully home was ok this afternoon, we had our turn yesterday…

SA aren’t alone, the VICs are suffering too, 350,000 without power tonight
Nemmco – Unplanned Electricity Interruption in Victoria
Massive power blackout hits Victoria

* Saturday 31st January 2009
NEMMCO confident it can meet Adelaide power
demand
SA Premier calls for NEMMCO heatwave inquiry

New firmware for Panasonc LX3

Firmware version 1.2 has been released for the Panasonic LX3.

Improvements are listed as:

1. Improved white balance flash mode setting when DMW-FL220 is connected.
2. Proper setting of shutter speed on iA mode and Scene mode when OIS is turned ON.
3. Proper Exif information in the JPEG picture file.

Considering I haven’t had any issues relating to these I’m not expecting to notice any differences, however being a compulsory upgrader I ran the upgrade anyway Only issue being the battery was at 2/3rds capacity according to the indicator, and unless the battery is fully charged you don’t even get prompted for the upgrade, sneaky!

A photo a day for 2009

To challenge myself to be a better photographer I decided to embark on a “Photo A Day” adventure for 2009.

I’ll see how the first month goes, however all being well I’ll be able to keep it up and do the whole year.

Wish me luck