USB digital camera

Message

Quinten · #1 Post by **Quinten** » 2004-05-09 06:37

Hello people,

Let me introduce myself: I'm Quinten Frenks, Iive in Berlin (Germany),and I'm intrested in linux for about 6 months now, so I'm what you would call a newbee.

Sonow that you know that I'm a newbee I will ask a newbee question:
I have a digital camera (usb) and I'm used to MS-Win*** what saw the camera inmidiatly after connenting it to the PC.
What must I do to open the pictures on the digitalcamera on a linux machine?

Danke!

chimaera · #2 Post by **chimaera** » 2004-09-16 08:15

hi quiten,

the way you can access the pictures depends on the camera.. normally there are two ways:

- usb mass-storage (no special software needed, just the appropriate kernel-modules). this is the case if your camera shows up as normal drive.

- special protocol. in this case gphoto2 [1] is the way to go. please check the very extensive docs their homepage. they have a very good chapter on installing and a huge compatability list.

[1] http://www.gphoto.org

Jeroen · #3 Post by **Jeroen** » 2004-09-16 08:40

Of course, gphoto is available as debian package, so install the debian package (gphoto2) rather than doing it the hard way and compiling it from source.

chimaera · #4 Post by **chimaera** » 2004-09-16 09:09

i was more refering to setting up the camera using hotplug than installing the software itself

moonlight · #5 Post by **moonlight** » 2005-04-04 19:51

The following command can be used to detect what kind of camera is connected via the USB interface :

As root :

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cat /var/log/syslog

A few examples of such an output :

-- Digital camera : HP PhotoSmart 318

Apr 4 21:37:12 localhost kernel: usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using address 8
Apr 4 21:37:13 localhost usb.agent[6972]: libgphoto2: loaded successfully

-- Digital camera : Canon Digital Ixus 50 (also called Canon Powershot SD400)

May 28 17:12:44 localhost kernel: usb 5-1: USB disconnect, address 4
May 28 17:12:49 localhost kernel: usb 5-1: new high speed USB device using address 5
May 28 17:12:50 localhost usb.agent[6116]: libgphoto2: loaded successfully

In this example it's clear that the camera is using the specific protocol, called 'gphoto2', the gphoto2 digital camera command-line client, which can be used by applications to access various digital camera models. An additional interesting packet, gtkam, GTK+ application for digital still cameras gtkam is a graphical application based on GTK+ for digital still cameras supported by gphoto2. (http://www.gphoto.org/)

This package provide the gphoto2 command-line frontend.

In order to install 'gphoto2' :

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apt-get install gphoto2

In order to install 'gtkam' :

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apt-get install gtkam

You can use now or gphoto2 (command line) or gtkam (graphical interface).

In order to verify if your camera is detected correctly, you can execute :

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gphoto2 --auto-detect

A few examples of such an output :

-- Digital camera : HP PhotoSmart 318

Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
HP PhotoSmart 318 (PTP mode) usb:
HP PhotoSmart 318 (PTP mode) usb:002,008

-- Digital camera : Canon Digital Ixus 50 (also called Canon Powershot SD400)

Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
USB PTP Class Camera usb:
laptop:~#

In fact the last one isn't yet in the official list of supported camera's, but the behaviour is anyhow perfect.

For the command line application gphoto2 I refer to it's self explaining man page, the graphical application gtkam is completely self explaining, including picture preview, etc.

Remark : without any change, those applications should be started as root. In order to launch the programs as a normal user, you have to update the group settings (adding the preferred usernames to the camera group).

laptop:~#cat /etc/group
...
camera107:username1,username2
...

Cheers, Moonlight

ps. for viewing the pictures after uploading them to your Linux machine, a number of programs are available, my favorite one is currently gThumb Image viewer (available in Debian : apt-get install gThumb)

moonlight · #6 Post by **moonlight** » 2005-07-19 05:03

An addition on my previous posting :

With the current version available in the Debian Testing distribution, version 2.1.6-1 of libgphoto2-2, the package used by different applications to access various
digital camera models, also the Canon Ixus 50 is supported.

laptop:~# gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
Canon Digital IXUS 50 (PTP mode) usb:
Canon Digital IXUS 50 (PTP mode) usb:005,003
laptop:~#

Cheers, Moonlight