Lorem Ipsum said:
Yep, that site is not only wrong, but dishonest. The picture at the top is
fake beyond belief.
And this: "This is how it works. The next time you're out to take night
photos, go ahead and snap a picture of Scene A, as you normally would. Then,
when it's convenient, take a photo of the exact same Scene A again, but with
the lens cap on."
Why take a photo of the exact same scene with the lens cap on? That's
crazy! The camera doesn't care where it is when the lens cap is on!
It's perfectly understandable to me.
Taking a photo with the lens cap on results in a "null" photo--that is, it's
completely black, except for perhaps any hot pixels.
Taking the "null" photo at more or less the same time as the scene's night
photo reproduces whatever hot pixels would occur at a given
time/temperature/humidity level for a given camera.
The tip subsequently describes masking out the hot pixels using layers,
which is why the photo appears "fake". Masking out the hot pixels means
using photo post processing software, and post-processed photos often look
"too perfect", thus, "fake". There could have also been additional
post-processing being done on that photo, in addition to just masking out
the hot pixels.
(Then again, some cameras with night modes do some sort of in-camera
post-processing of night mode photos, such as taking a second exposure after
the first exposure. The debate over the quality of the camera
post-processing vs. photo post-processing software will not be revisited
here.)
Really, that tip is just explaining how to deal with an obvious camera
defect--hot pixels in night photos--that has been really accepted for far
too long as a "normal" part of digital photography, primarily in the
interest of lower-cost digital cameras.
In all reality, a properly functioning digital camera should have zero
missing or hot pixels on its sensor and on its LCD display.
..uh