My 40D has developed a problem with recording some sort of hot spot in the image (always in the same spot). Can anyone tell me what this is? Is it dust somewhere, or an actual problem with the sensor?


Following are a few images to try to explain. These are 100% crops. When I open a raw image in DPP, I see a very clear 2x2 pixels that are a few different shades of deep red, but saving images to either jpg or tif of course show affects of resampling, aliasing or whatever.


The first image is a 100% crop from an out of focus background. The second is from a completely under-exposed shot (completely black). I don't think either of these really capture the essence of the problem, but it is the best I could come up with. It is really annoying, the spot inevitably showing up right in someone's dark hair, etc. It happens to be in the upper intersection of 1/3 points, right where I'm always trying to place the subject.


[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.30.36/HotSpot2.JPG[/img]


[img]/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Components.UserFiles/00.00.00.30.36/HotSpot3.jpg[/img]