Re: [Sheflug] Digital Cameras and USB.

[Craig Andrews <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

Do you have an AT or ATX motherboard? I am assuming that you have an AT
motherboard. These most often have USB controllers and no actual ports.

First, though, a USB port is a small rectangular hole about 1cm x 0.5cm
(ish) with a small (usually white) plastic rectangular piece of plastic
for purposes of orientation.

These are available as a backplane for most motherboards for £5 from
Gemsoft in town.

Many cameras are supported by USB, but many are not. My camera (Kodak
DC3200) is not. I use, therefore, a SanDisk USB compact flash reader. I
just plug in the card from the camera and use it if it were an external
disk.

These are £27.50 from Jessops on Fitzalan Square.

A final alternative is to get one with a supported serial interface. A
list of these is available at http://www.gphoto.org/cameras-04.html

Version 0.43 of GPhoto is available with all current distributions, and
supports every camera in the list.

It is probably worth your while to get Linux Format this month, as there
is an 8 page USB special. Last month they did a camera roundup too. I
will dig it out for you and send you the highlights off list if you
like.

The following cameras are supported as external USB devices needing no
extra software:

* Casio 2x00, 3x00
* Minolta Dimage 7 
* Nikon Coolpix 995 
* Olympus C-200Z, C-860L, C-2040, C-3040Z 
* HP PhotoSmart 315, 618, 912 
* Fuji 1400Zoom, 2400Zoom, FinePix 4700Zoom, Finepix 4900Zoom,
FinePix1300, FinePix4500
* Leica Digilux 4.3
* Sony DSC-F505, DSC-F505V 

And as I said, the SanDisk ImageMate II compact flash reader makes any
CF camera work.

One final option (yes, another one!) is to get a camera with a
SmartMedia card, and use either a USB smartmedia reader, or a SmartMedia
floppy disk adapter, which lets you mount your camera memory as a
standard (although very spacious) floppy disk.

If this is all a bit much to take in, just ask. I'm sure plenty of
people know a bit more detail that I do!

Craig

On Sun, 2001-12-09 at 17:08, Richard Fletcher wrote:
> Hello,
> Its my 21st soon and my mum has offered to get me a digital camera. But I 
> have my concerns over the transfer of images from it to my PC. Since I dont 
> run windows whatsoever I need to know it will work with Linux. Im assuming 
> there is software out there to cope with the transfer but I also have the 
> problem of the actual connection.
> 
> Im sure that my motherboard supports USB as there is an option in the BIOS to 
> disable it, but I have no plug at the back which could possibly be USB, 
> although I admit I have no idea what a USB plug looks like. Now assuming that 
> all digital camera's use USB I could be a bit stuck, and may well have to ask 
> for something else instead.
> 
> So should I invest in some kind of plug and attatch it to part of the 
> motherboard, or are there cameras out there which are quite happy to use the 
> parallel port, or should I give up altogether because there's no software out 
> there which could possibly help?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Fletcher, Sheffield, UK.
> "Those who shun unix are forced to reinvent it."
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 
> Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk . 
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> 
>   GNU the choice of a complete generation.
> 

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