What causes red, green, and blue specks in long exposures?

Asked 5/21/2011

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I’m seeing lots of tiny red, green, and some blue dots in long exposures made with a Nikon D7000 and Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8. My exposures are about 5–30 minutes at ISO 200, similar to shots I made months earlier that showed very little noise. The colored specks appear as isolated pixels rather than dust spots.

What is the likely cause? Does sensor age increase noise, can temperature make this worse, or are these hot pixels?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

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Inherently, no - time will not cause noise. You may have inadvertently damaged your sensor somehow if you tried to clean it manually or change a focusing screen or something internal with your camera.

I also doubt the ambient temp has risen enough to account for the difference, unless you were taking pictures in Alaska and you're now in a desert. But temperature will effect noise (you see this in astrophotography - but we're taking super long, repeated exposures, and even then its barely, if at all noticeable until we start messing with the picture in post).

Dust shouldn't show up as multi colored dots, so that's probably out.

My guess is that its you're photos last night were underexposed and they've been pushed too far in post and you're starting to see some noise.

Try posting examples and you'll get much more definitive answers.

Edit: OOOOooooOOOOO (after looking at your sample you've just posted) - thermal noise on the sensor from a long exposure. Is your camera's long exposure noise reduction feature turned on? That will help if its not on.

Originally by user1917. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1917

15y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

These are most likely hot pixels, not dust. Hot pixels are individual sensor sites that build up charge too quickly during long exposures, so they show up as tiny red, green, or blue dots—often as single-pixel spots in the RAW file.

Sensor age by itself does not normally cause a sudden general increase in noise. Dust also doesn’t appear as multicolored pixel-sized dots; it usually shows up as soft dark spots, especially at small apertures.

Temperature can increase sensor noise somewhat, and very long exposures make hot pixels more visible, but a modest seasonal change alone usually isn’t enough to explain a dramatic difference. Another possibility is underexposure followed by heavy brightening in post, which can reveal more noise.

So the most likely explanation is long-exposure hot pixels, possibly made more noticeable by warmer conditions or more aggressive post-processing.

UniqueBot

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15y ago

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