K20D is Still "Hot" with Firmware 1.01

Despite that Pentax released a firmware update of the version 1.01 for the K20D for trying/showing to eliminate the hot pixels issue, it seems that the effectiveness of this new and latest firmware is yet in question.

First of all, Dpreview still needed to tell this issue in their final published review of the K20D, despite that which was only published after Pentax completed their firmware update in response to the issue, indeed already for quite a while, after the first time DPR reported the issue that another reviewer and they found earlier. Specifically, the following quotes are extracted from that "Conclusion" page of the DPR K20D review:-

"However, the hot pixel problems, combined with the sample-to-sample variability (in this instance ISO 3200 banding), represent the sorts of problems we haven't seen in DSLRs launched in the past few years. Which makes us wonder whether Samsung has over-reached itself with such an ambitious design. This is reflected in our image quality score that without these niggles would have been even higher." - Dpreview

Well, I do also agree that the image quality of the K20D could be quite good, but the hot sensor and this hot pixel problem seems to be a *real* issue, and worst thing is that it seems to be *just* a hardware issue, as I guessed the first time when I saw the hot pixel reports, which the DPR technical writers are also wondering the same thing in the above.

Another fact that does tell that the K20D has an ever hottest sensor is that there is NOW *no* option for the user to turn off the dark-frame-subtraction "Noise Reduction" (NR) for longer time exposure which just reflects that this sensor is extremely noisy by itself and the user is forced to turn on the NR all the time when just longer shutter speeds are selected. Note that the K20D is the *only* Pentax DSLR which had this NR function disabled, so it is obvious that it must be the Samsung sensor!

Now, user reports on the appearance of hot pixels yet continue. See the recent report below, with sample photos showing the hot pixels posted:-

K20d, still hotpixel issue with jpegs or something wrong with my camera?

As we all can see, the hot pixels issue has never been resolved with the firmware 1.01. The following are quoted, for what the user reported:-

"Not in the same spot, they move around quite a lot. The crops are, for example taken on the right side in one image, and more to the left in the other. Even if a frequent blue + white/green close to each other and then a red abit away from them seem to happen a lot.

Did more pixel peeping, and in at least one picture if I zoom in a lot I can find at least 15 dots that got no reason beeing there. All looking like the ones I showed in the first post."

Do note that the number of hot pixels are not small indeed, nor, they are fixed in positions, i.e., they are going to show up randomly and are moving around.

Despite some of the good image quality I really like with the K20D, this particular hot pixels issue (most probably caused by a hot sensor itself) is just enough to put me off to consider the K20D further. I hope Pentax and Samsung can make a debugged version of the K20D with a debugged sensor very soon, so as to make a new sensor and hence the final produced images of the new camera are no longer so hot!

All in all, if someone is just so naive that such very possibly hardware problem could be cured (or just completely hidden) by firmware (which is just a software thing afterall), then we should not be seeing those hot pixels anymore *now*, nor, DPR needed to report the issue, even though they had been "kind" enough to wait for Pentax to complete their remedial firmware before they published their final report for their K20D review.