How I Fixed a Dead Pixel in my Sony a7s II. I can’t Believe this Actually Works!

The strangest thing occurred on Thanksgiving. I was taking lots of candid family pics with my a7s II and then I noticed a white dot in the middle of the image. I stopped shooting and ran a cleaning cycle to remove a dust speck but it didn’t go away and now that I’m thinking about it I wouldn’t see a dust speck on the sensor at f2.8. They usually show up like blobs when the lens is around f16. This is a sharp white dot. I checked the lens front and back and nothing. Maybe it’s the LCD. Zooming around the image confirmed it wasn’t. It must be a dead pixel. Yep it’s dead pixel. So bummed.

I went through the menu looking for some settings I knew didn’t exist. Hoping a pixel refresh option lived in that messy Sony menu. Nope. I posted this picture of the dead pixel on Instagram and Facebook.

While going through the a7s II menu I thought if I changed the camera to PAL and back to NTSC that it might help. I did this and the camera gave a warning that it needed to reformat the card. I screwed up and accidently initiated the format. Oh no! I just lost all the images and video I had shot. I was furious I did that. So stupide! Grrrr! And it didn’t fix it either. Camera in hand I was defeated. I figured I will just keep taking pictures and yep. Fix it in post.

I was certain I would have to send the camera back to Sony for warranty service and that would be an issues since I’m doing a tutorial video on the a7s II in January and need the camera. More on this later but it’s very cool.

Then like a knight in shining armour Kyle Chappell had a solution and posted it on my Facebook page. (come by and give it like!)

“Set the date forward on your date/time 2 months, and then turn the camera off. Wait about five seconds, the shutter will close, the sensor will re-map and the pixels should be gone! Fingers crossed?”

It worked! I can’t believe it did! But yeah it worked!

Now I’m baffled how it did work. When I set the date forward the shutter made a sound I haven’t heard before it clicked and a couple seconds after it turned off. This was the remapping thing going down. Crazy. After I turned the a7s II back on the dead pixel was gone. I’ve learned that the camera performs a pixel remap every month automatically. That’s why it works when you force the month forward it will perform the pixel remapping. I also found it works going back a month as well. This little trick also works on many Sony alpha cameras.

In true Thanksgiving tradition I want to say how thankful I am for Kyle Chapple helping me with this strange and brilliant solution. I don’t know how he knew to do this but I’m thankful he did.

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Filed in: A7s II • Featured Post
Tagged with: a7sII • Dead Pixel • Mirrorless • Sony