damned cameras

Unclear why you thin that is rational. It is much more sensible for a camera to offer to transfer new images to your main machine for you!

Indeed but most cameras will themselves mount as a mass storage device and some maybe even charge (or flatten :( ) their battery when attached as a USB mass storage device - with the SD card still inside the camera.

A few will even do it over Wifi but be sure to set a decent strong PW!

Lumix is quite nice if a bit big. If I didn't want something so small I could palm or pocket it I would probably have gone for one of them. I prefer Pentax K5 for my main camera and a Canon Ixus 100is as a P&S.

All the cameras I have ever had would mount as mass storage and most of them would automagically transfer new images to the PC on request. And that applies right back to my original Kodak DC-120.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

Yes, my Nikon P520 does that, after a driver install. The old Canon just appeared as a USB drive.

But I have no problem copying the files from the Nikon to a hard drive, then they open as standard. In fact with Dropbox running on the PC, you can have the files auto-download to a Dropbox folder as soon as the camera is connected. Personally I dont like that type of automation, but it does save doing it manually.

--
Regards, 

Adrian Jansen           adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net 
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

I suspect that what's happening is Explorer knows enough PTP to ask for the file list from the camera, but isn't smart enough to pull them to a temporary location on the hard drive for any random program to access. The Windows viewer probably has enough knowledge of PTP to do it.

As far as I know, PTP works a little bit like FTP; you can say things like "send me all of file dscn1234.jpg", but you can't say "hey, open dscn1234.jpg, seek to byte 5678, and give me the next 910 bytes".

I don't think I've ever plugged my L20 into my XP machine, so I don't know for sure.

Hey, if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows did something stupid... wait, he already does.

Matt Roberds

Williams and Taylor's "Electronic Filter Design Handbook" is somewhat greater, but harder to use.

/dp/0071471715

John Larkin does have a copy of that too.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

My wife's most recent camera is a Lumix DMC-XS1 - very compact.

94 x 54 x 14 mm (3.7 x 2.13 x 0.55").

It took over from a Casio Exilim EX-S600 (which still works fine, but doesn't have the latest bells and whistles).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

The manual (you could read it too) says it speaks MTP and PTP. 3rd party apps should be no problem.

I'd use an SD to USB adaptor.

It's a good point that the feature is switchable on a lot of cameras.

My bigger Nikons have switchable interface. This newfangled one that lets the benighted vomit their unedited photos out directly to a cartridge-sucking inkjet printer is probably to blame.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward" 
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com 
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Just one more thought. Irfanview allows to view and download images using a TWAIN compatible device. Certainly on my Nikon P520, the camera shows up as a TWAIN source when plugged into the USB port. And Irfanview will allow to select the camera as a TWAIN source and pick up the image from it.

Seems better than extracting the SD card each time. Especially when the cameras start using micro-SD cards.

--
Regards, 

Adrian Jansen           adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net 
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.

as a

driver

the

stick

Good luck with that. The misapplied buying power of megasoft is enormous. Google is almost as bad already and Amazon is getting there. Thank the masses of asses.

?-)

Bingo. They subsidize it.

?-)

And that the default might not be what the end user wants...

I agree it could well be a conspiracy by the inkjet printer makers to get the great unwashed to use more extortionately priced ink. ISTR OEM cartridges the price per gram for ink is higher than for refined heroin! (and the ink is mostly solvent!!!)

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

It could be that the SD card that I got with the camera is formatted exFAT, and that lets Microsoft do their Windows nasties.

I wonder if most cameras will work with a flash card that's programmed FAT32, and if they would act like a plain memory stick if so. Anybody know?

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

I don't *know*. I don't have a camera that supports exFAT.

My *guess* is that the filesystem on the card is independent of which interface the camera presents to the host system. Typically, I would expect the camera to support just one filesystem on the card; if you plug in a card with any other filesystem, the camera will probably be confused.

If the camera supports more than one interface to the host system, I would expect that choice to be in the setup menus somewhere. I also wouldn't expect support for more than one interface on a pointy-shoot camera; it would be more of a DSLR thing.

There appears to still be some traffic at news:rec.photo.digital and they might know. On the other hand, a web forum might be better.

used to be a good review site, and it has forums, but now they apparently sell cameras as well, so any review is suspect. also has reviews and forums.

Standard disclaimers apply: I don't get money or other consideration from any companies mentioned.

Matt Roberds

exFAT is too new for there to be many of them about. I'd expect a new model to accept suitable sized old FAT32 memory cards as well. It might offer to format them as exFAT though zapping any data that is present.

More likely it will offer to reformat it as exFAT if it is fussy. Most stuff is usually backwards compatible to save on customer support calls.

Most cameras will present a mass storage device interface and a Twain one - I expect there are plenty of exceptions to this rule though. There are newer whizzy interfaces about mainly for consumer kit.

Usually there are config settings in either the camera settings menu or the PC driver software (or both) to determine the default action when the camera is plugged into the PC. Typical options being:

Do nothing Open a directory listing (and set default thumbnail properties) Download all new images

Pretty much like you get offered as the defaults for plugging in a thumb drive containing particular playable media. You can override the defaults if you want to by selecting another action/player as default.

The camera needs to be set to behave like a mass storage device if you don't want to take advantage of the smart download features. The latter may also include choices to have separate directories used for each day/week/month (day being the default on most cameras I have seen).

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

I got the one by Carl Yung.