This page attempts to describe how to get your DigitalCamera working under Linux.

I found some good info about digital cameras at http://www.teaser.fr/hfiguiere/linux/digicam.html - zcat(1)

See also HowToKodakDigitalcamHOWTO? and HowToUSBDigitalCameraHOWTO?.

Software

Linux software for transfering pictures off cameras:

• gphoto2 (the "main" software, it has all the low-level libraries and a CLI)
• gtkam (GNOME or GTK-only front-end to the gphoto2 libraries)
• kamera (KDE front-end to gphoto2, also allows you to use a camera:// URI in konqueror)
• GIMP 1.2 and later - if gphoto2 is installed (or the more specifically the gphoto gimp-plugin), you can use File -> Acquire

These programs have Debian packages of the same name - I would guess RPM-based distros do too.

Notes/Trouble-shooting

• Almost all "recent" cameras use USB, so make sure you have the correct USB support in your kernel (this seems fairly likely).
• Also, many "recent" cameras (such as the Kodak DX series) use the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), which gphoto2 supports. Some other cameras might require kernel support for their own protocols.
• See HotPlug for information on setting up using USB devices with linux.

The Kodak DX3900, unlike all the other DX cameras, doesn't allow uploading files from your computer to the camera - you get a write error. (see kodak.broaddaylight.com)

There are two main ways to read (and write) files from (and to) a digital camera: using gphoto2, or accessing the raw filesystem as a mass-storage device.

GPhoto2

These are pretty generic instructions, using a Kodak CX4230 as an example).

You need to load the USB modules (not sure which ones, I have them built in), assuming you have a USB camera, of course.

Under Debian, you can

apt-get install gphoto2.

You then want to run

gphoto2 --port "usb:" --camera "Kodak CX4230" -P

This will detect the camera plugged into the USB port.

And with any luck you will have your photos downloaded to $PWD, otherwise you can use the "--get-all-files" argument to gphoto2.

After you're done, you can erase the pictures from the camera with

gphoto2 --port "usb:" --camera "Kodak CX4230" -D

It is not strictly necessary to specify the port and camera model, since gphoto2 will scan them, and will also store these settings in the $HOME/.gphoto/settings file.

If you don't want to use the command-line, you can use one of the graphical front-ends mentioned earlier up the page.

Mass-Storage device

If you have a camera not supported by gphoto, you can probably still mount it as a USB drive. Under a stock RedHat just plug it in check what it got detected as;

1. dmesg

~ USB Mass Storage device found at 4 SCSI device sda: 14528 512-byte hdwr sectors (7 MB) sda: Write Protect is off

sda: sda1

1. cdrecord --scanbus ~~

   0,0,0 0) 'CONCORD ' 'DIGITAL CAMERA ' '1.00' Removable Disk

   ~~

then mount it (make sure the /mnt/usbfs directory or whereever you decide to mount it exists)

1. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbfs

Your piccies will appear somewhere under this directory and you can copy, move, delete them like any other filesystem.

/mnt/usbfs/dcim/100duopl:

• rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 189064 Jan 2 2000 img00001.jpg

The same steps should work for any other Linux distro, although you might need to manually load modules for USB and USB filesystem support.

The procedure was almost identical under FreeBSD, but I've forgotten exactly what I did. I'll wiki that up some other time.

Here is how I got my brand new Samsung Digimax V4 digital camera working in Linux.

By 'working' I mean, the files on the Secure Digital card are readable while the camera is connected to my PC via USB.

First of all, I am using Linux 2.4.21 on Gentoo (2003-07-18), with an Asus A7V8X motherboard (hence KT400 chipset).

I have a CD burner so I already have the SCSI emulation compiled into my kernel (or as modules). The only extra SCSI module I needed is the SCSI Disk driver (sd_mod.o). I also had Mass Storage support (usb-storage.o) and the USB virtual filesystem support.

After connecting my camera to the USBus, a quick 'dmesg' showed that the camera had been detected. I loaded the usb-storage driver and the SCSI disk driver. I confirmed that it had been picked up as an emulated SCSI device by

$ cat /proc/scsi/usb-storage-0/1

Host scsi1: usb-storage

Vendor: SAMSUNG

Product: DIGIMAX V4

Serial Number: None

Protocol: 8070i

Transport: Bulk

GUID: 083910090000000000000000

Attached: Yes

Also, /dev/sda1 appeared.

To mount the filesystem on the camera's SD card, I simply

$ mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbfs

And voila!

I think that was all. The hardest part was working out what drivers I needed.

Under Gentoo with my Sony 5MP camera, I did all of the above and also added a /etc/fstab entry to use Supermount to automatically mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt/camera this works really well as now I can just plug and unplug the camera as I please and it automatically mounts and unmounts it. It also even shows a purty little icon on your Gnome desktop.