Hey man, it's funny you should ask because every time I look through my long exposure pics in Lightroom, some of the shadows look like they may contain noise, but when I click on it to zoom in (it animates to zoom in,) the noise disappears in the zoomed in version and it's replaced by some approximated color and luminance values that throws off the gradient in the entire picture. It's hard to explain, but it's so far only been visible on raw files. But then again, once I started to do long exposure shots, I stopped shooting in jpg. Regardless of the ugly gradient, I haven't had a single hot pixel on my A200. I'd try it out and see if it would make a difference; from what I've experienced, there isn't a single bit. Then again, that's just me; I could be completely wrong.
--Kiran

I've taken a lot of long exposures with my a350, and I always find a dozen or so small but solid blue and red dots. Exposures of 1-5 minutes, ISO 100 ( I do a lot of night photography). I know this has happened in RAW and I'm pretty sure in JPEG too.

Thanks for the replies. I guess there's not much I can do about it other than cloning (or ignoring)?

Wait, they let you do shutter speeds lower than 30 seconds on the other alphas?
--Kiran

Yes, when you put the A200 in "M", and then change the shutter speed one notch past 30s, the shutter speed will change to "bulb".

Lightroom will reduce noise automatically if its the hot pixel noise from long exposure. I discovered this when taking some night shots with noise reduction turned off. The 100% zooms are the only true view of the image.

Not related to hot pixels, but I've been using Sony's Image Data Converter software for processing my RAW files, and I've been reluctant to spend the money on Lightroom. Is it worth it? Anything major that Lightroom can do and Sony's software can't do?

I hate sounding like an ad (which is what I do from all my posts about editing in Lightroom,) but from what I read about sony's software, it doesn't seem to be enough, so, I'll install it right now and give you feedback.
--Kiran

Hi Bdavids,

The main differences between Photoshop Lightroom and the Sony software is in the workflow and speed of use. Lightroom is much quicker when selecting images, assigning keywords and performing general edits. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits is the fact that Lightroom is non-destructive in it's editing- make a mistake and it is easy to revert back to a different state. Also one can create several different versions of an image for a small amount of disk space- you could have differing crops or maybe a B+W image.

If you are unsure then you could always download the free, 30 day trial and see what you think. That way if you don't like it, or think it's worth the upgrade it's cost you nothing.

HTH

Andrew

Thanks for the tip. I'll download the trial, but I'm worried I might like it and then I'll have to buy it. I'm taking a trip to southern Utah in about a month, so speed and workflow improvements sound pretty nice for going through the hundreds of pictures I'm sure to come home with.

Hey man,

It took me ages for some reason to install the stuff on the disc. I copied a raw file on my desktop and played around with it. Honestly, if there's one thing I hate about lightroom, it's the fact that it doesn't preserve the settings that I used on my camera to shoot a specific image (the contrast, color and sharpness,) and it resets it after opening it. However, since it's non-destructive, the file in windows explorer looks normal, but not in lightroom. With that said, this might be a pretty good thing to add to my workflow, even though it may add a few minutes to see if I like the photo shot in the settings on camera or if I wanna start over from scratch with that edit.

Regardless, like Andrew said, the non-destructive editing is the best part about it and I can link you to free Adobe tutorials teaching you how to use it, and it's from Adobe, so, ain't no piratin' going on. Anyway, I hope you try it out and add to any other differences that I haven't covered so anyone who's reading can stay keep up with this. Hope that helps.
--Kiran

P.S.
A really cool lightroom blog by matt kloskowski:
www.lightroomkillertips.com

Adobe Video Workshop:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

I've been fiddling with the Lightroom trial a bit and I think I like it. The biggest difference, aside from the non-destructive editing is the fact that you can do everything in one program. With the Sony software you have to organize and rate the images using Image Data Lightbox (which is slow and likes to crash in Vista) and then edit/convert the RAW files using Image Data Converter. I'm not sure about the interface yet, but I just started using it.

Lightbox Pros (Compared to Image Data Converter):
- Much faster
- Non-Destructive editing
- More control over exposure, color, sharpening, etc.
- Option to convert to DNG format
- Easier to apply previous processing
- Doesn't crash (hasn't yet, at least)
- Handles large batches of RAW files better
- Cropping/Straightening options
- Chromatic aberration removal

Cons:
- I like the side-by-side view in Image Data Lightbox, which I don't immediately see the ability to do in Lightroom, although I haven't looked too hard yet
- Cost (compared to free Sony software)
- Haven't come across anything else that bothers me yet