White dots over K20d pics!

Hi all,
I purchased a K20d about 2 weeks ago now and have enjoyed using it for a variety of location photography. I have now come to process lots of images and noticed that every single one regardless of the lens, settings, iso and pc software all have little white specs over the shots.

Of course I assumed this to be dust, but from my experience dust on the sensor comes out as blurred dots (out of focus dust) however these almost look like tiny white dead pixels as they are very sharp.
Here is a little sample of where they become most annoying - when the background is black. (Sorry I cant show more of the shot as its for work)




This was shot on 100iso using flash, tripod, SR on.

I have tried it on all my better lenses (ltds and *s) with similar results.
Of course I have tried the dust shaking mechanism about 5 times and before each shot and still no change. The camera is brand new so the only thing I can think of is a firmware fault or that I need to change some custom settings.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.[/list]

It's certainly not dust. Dust on the sensor would appear as dark dots or blobs, and dust on/in the lens would be out-of-focus.

Could be a hot pixel problem. Apparently there is indeed a bug in the firmware, and there will be, or is, a firmware update.

See http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=k20d+hot+pixels&meta=

(I don't have a K20D myself, so I'm not quite up-to-date with the issue).

As I posted in your duplicate thread:

Were you using the 2sec timer? There's a known problem when using the 2sec timer on the K20D that causes "hot pixels" (that's what this looks like) which is apparently a firmware bug which Pentax have said they will be releasing a fix for in the coming weeks.

I had my K20 on 2 sec timer for most of the weekend and after reading this post i went in and scrutinised all my night shots and found no hot pixel problem as described here.
I suspect its an isolated problem :

Yup. Some have found it, most haven't. There's been ongoing threads about it on Depressing Review (Why do I keep reading that site?).

From reading the threads over on depressing review I don't think it is an isolated problem. However, it seems that it doesn't affect all K20D's. When I read about it I also went back to have a look at shots I made with the 2s timer. Of course I couldn't look in SilkyPix as it does get rid of hot pixels pretty quickly.

As it seems my K20D is immune against this effect.
The firmware upgrade should cure it for affected cameras.

Thanks for the quick replies. Apologies for the double, addidentally posted on film SLR instead of digi to begin with.

I was using a 2 sec timer so will have to check if those shot without the timer are still affected.
I have checked Pentax’s firmware page and there has been no releases since those for the K10d.
I really hope the firmware is fixed soon as I am spending longer spotting out images now then when I was scanning my film!

However... After some browsing I found that Pentax are on the case
http://pentaxlife.com/pentax-k20d-hot-pixels-problem-confirmed

The firmware update is now out for this issue:
http://www.pentax.jp/english/support/digital/k20d_s.html