damned cameras

EyeFi simplified things for a while, but I seem to have problems with it lately.

For a while there, you simply set most any camera near a USB port and the uploads were automatic.

I agree 1,000%. Whne they do shit like that there is a reason and I would bet it has something to do with planned obsolescence.

Why else ?

Sir: thank you VERY much for your books TTL Logic and CMOS logic. They introduced me to digital electronics as well as my eagerly looking forward to your section in Popular Electronics.

just stumbled in and recognized your address.

There are few that are cheaper. You might think about getting something better with 10x zoom.

Perhaps they expect you to remove the SD card, insert it into an SD to USB adapter, and copy directly from the card that way? That's what I do because I've found that file transfers using a USB cable to the camera are much slower than removing the card.

Dunno. I'm suprised that it doesn't work. Some cameras provide USB access to the SD card only when the camera power turned on. However, I found one where that works only when turned off (power supplied by the USB port). Others require that the camera "mode" switch be in some specific position. I guess it's time to RTFM. Kinda reads like you should be able to just browse the SD card via USB. Try again.

Yech. It cannot be used as a webcam: Send it back even if you can read the SD card.

USB cameras tend to present one or two sorts of endpoint interface... PTP (picture transfer protocol) or mass-storage (data-stick).

Some of them are switchable. My wife has a couple of Nikon point-and-shoot cameras, and at least one of them can be switched between these two protocols (only one at a time).

Check your camera's Setup menu... it may let you change the USB presence to "mass storage". If so, you'd get what you want.

On a sunny day (Sun, 23 Mar 2014 19:12:29 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

There are SDcard for in cameras with WiFi these days, and cameras with WiFi too I think. In my Canon I just take out the sdcard and put it in the PC.. Maybe the lid wil wear out some day, I like that camera

The USB digital cameras I've used from the mid-00s just appeared to the PC like a USB flash drive. You could also take out the card, stick it in a card reader, and see it as a FAT32 filesystem with JPEGs on it.

I have a Nikon Coolpix L20 from about 2009 that implements "Picture Transfer Protocol". When connected to a PC, it doesn't show up like a USB flash drive. You need a program that speaks PTP to retrieve the files from it. I use gtkam on Linux, and I think Microsoft's "Scanner and Camera Wizard" on XP (or whatever it morphed into on later Windows) can do it as well. gtkam gives me a "directory tree" view, optionally with thumbnails. I can select a bunch of pictures and say "download these", and a little while later I have a bunch of JPEGs sitting on my hard drive.

I also have the option of pulling out the SD card and sticking it into a reader. It has to be an SDHC reader for 4 GB or greater SD cards (and, I guess, an SDXC reader for 32 GB or greater SD cards). When I do that, it shows up as a plain old FAT32 filesystem with JPEGs on it.

So: You might look for a camera that *doesn't* speak PTP, or that can have it turned off.

Something else to look out for: Because the entire world could read and write FAT32, Microsoft introduced a new proprietary and patented filesystem, exFAT. You have to pay protection money to Microsoft to implement it, at least in the US. Some newer digital cameras (2012-up) may want to use this format on their cards. If you always use the camera as the card reader, you will be OK. If you only ever plug the card directly into recent Windows (Vista and up, XP with a patch) or OS X (10.6.5 and up) machines, you will be OK. If you want to plug the card into something else, you may have trouble.

Matt Roberds

ACtually it probably did but was silent about installing it and/or it looked close enough to the generic driver to work with the default. The price for ever more complex devices is that they need custom drivers.

Most of them will mount as a mass storage device if you use the right settings so RTFM. Just as expensive DSLRs will work with legacy lenses but not with the out of the box settings (maker wants to sell new kit).

Actually an interface that offers to download all new photos when you plug the camera in isn't such a bad design (that is what Canon does). Why should you need to drag and drop stuff over manually?

The Mickeysoft media viewer is pretty naff though and a strange choice. You should be able to override which app opens files by using Irfanview to grab back the extensions that the installer has mutilated.

I won't even attempt to defend ugly installer software that tramples on existing registry settings with a me-*me*-ME-*ME* attitude! I also find software by major players that is not digitally signed very annoying...

My little Canon works just like a USB stick. ;)

Cheers

Same with my Olympus.

Looks like Larkin includes User Manuals in his "crutch" demeanor >:-} ...Jim Thompson

John Larkin scribbled thus:

I just plug my Fuji into the USB port and turn the camera on. Works just fine. My old Polaroid won't read the memory into USB unless its turned off !

I also have an L20. It does appear as a memory-stick device, but the files can only be opened in the camera folder using the awful Windows Media Viewer. They are jpegs, but Irfanview can't open them unless I first copy them to a folder on my hard drive. I asked Irfan about that, and he doesn't understand it either.

I figured that Microsoft was involved in this mess somehow.

My older Fuji does too, which is why I bought another one.

Active Filter Cookbook is great.

Thanks; I'll try a Canon next. Maybe an older one.

Hey, did you get the sand?

I wonder if the cam would behave better if I plugged in a card that was formatted with the old FAT32. The card that I bought with the camera is likely the new Microsoft-locked format.

Too late; it's scheduled for pickup.

Linux seems to deal MUCH better with arbitrary cameras and other devices. I've never had to load any manufacturer-specific software to download images from them.

Jon

Because the Chinese don't want to spend money on engineering. They want to buy chips for which the engineering has already been done.

I can't say this for sure, but I'll bet that Microsoft makes it really easy to get cheap embedded code that only works with Microsoft junk on the other end.

Neither my 2-year old Lumix nor the similar age Nikon pointy-shooty require anything special. Stick the SD card in any computer and off it goes.

Problem with those little cameras is that any recommendation is dated- the half-life of a design must be something like 6 months.

FWIW, I prefer the Panasonic Lumix with Leica lens by a small margin. It even has GPS and a table of locations built in. It doesn't charge from the USB port, which sux, but it has better control locations.

--sp