Which digital still cameras have 'remote capture' capability?
As of 4 Dec 2004, mostly from the gphoto mailing lists)
These are notes to determine which cameras support remote image capture
(i.e. taking a picture using the computer instead of your finger),
especially under Linux, using gphoto2 probably. One would think that in the era
of digital cameras and USB this would be a given, but it's not.
cameras
Known to work:
May work:
- Canon SD20 (recent patch, like A200, S200, IXUS v2, IXUS 330)
- Canon PowerShot G5 - "may be possible"
- Olympus C-765 (same as 750?)
- Olympus C-5060 (works on Windows, but beeps & crashes on Linux)
- Olympus (all) - "might work ok"
Known NOT to work:
- PhotoSmart 935
- Sony DSC-F828
Unknown:
misc notes from the lists
- Canon SD20 was recently added to gphoto via a patch, but it was a
trivial patch of just adding the ID, so other cameras of that ilk may also work.
But the patch did explicitly set the 'CAP_SUP' flag meaning that capture should work.
- Kodak CX 73xx series seems to cause people problems
- Olympus cameras also have to be switched to pc control mode from
storage mode for use with capture: on the 750 with the card slot open,
hold "OK" and "view" button until a menu pops up on the lcd.
- The above appears to be true for many cameras: they have two modes
"normal" and "ptp" and switching between the two requires human effort.
- "Canon has developed some extensions to support capture. This is crazy,
but there is nothing that can be done but supporting this."
- Fuji Finepix (S20) cameras may eventually work, but there is NDA crap going on
some thoughts
- Cameras have various level of capability.
Just because someone says it supports PTP or other capture-capable protocol
doesn't mean the camera itself supports capture.
- Canon seems very popular and perhaps works (even with wacky extentions).
Perhaps focus on them rather than Kodak.
- Look at OS X's "Image Capture" program and the cameras it supports.
OS X is unix, and its Image Capture API is pretty slick.
Maybe just ditch Linux.