Neil Booth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm considering buying a digital camera or videocam, but am concerned > about being able to download the JPEG images to Linux. Of course, the > cameras come with a serial cable and software for downloading the > images to Windows. > > Does anyone know if these cameras simply pass the JPEG data down the > serial line, or is there some special camera-specific protocol they > use (rendering it useless without special software)? In the former > case, how would I capture the data coming down the serial line? > > Thanks for any information or advice, > > Neil. > Hi Neil,
I do competitive analysis of digital cameras for my company. I will not tell you which camera to buy :-) *but* I will emphatically insist that you *not* get a Sony Mavica. I will try to explain a few things that will help you. First, connectivity. I would recommend going to the gphoto site to see what their software supports. Their software is intended to allow image downloads from a tethered camera (serial, USB). This method usually uses a protocol called Twain. There is a www.twain.org site, I haven't visited it yet. The driver for the digital camera most likely uses Twain, as does Photoshop and some other apps that can get images directly from the camera. I haven't been able to bring cameras home to test which ones use a proper implementation of Twain or which ones gphoto works with -- yet. Experimentation and asking around, as you are, is your best bet for specific information about any particular model. Second, storage. This is related to the first point. Unless you are using a camera that allows scripting on the host to control it ( via Digita OS from FlashPoint technologies ), then you are simply transferring images. This is all that 99 percent of the people want anyway. So you just need a reader for the storage media, then the camera driver isn't really an issue. This is what the person was getting at when he suggested the Sony Mavica with floppy disks. Unfortunately, the images the Mavica produces lose a great deal of information when being stored to the disk. There just isn't enough room an a puny little floppy for all the data, so the camera compresses the hell out of the image. This isn't just a problem for Sony, but I don't know of any other cameras that come with less than a 4MB card for storage. Most now come with min. 8MB. There are PCMCIA card adapters for both SmartMedia and CompactFlash. This may be the way to go. I'm not sure what you'd have to do to mount the card, haven't experimented that far. Good starter cameras ($300 range) check out the Olympus D-340R, HP C-200, Fuji MX-1200. All of the cameras in this range are a little slow between pics. They are 1MegaPixel cameras, so the image quality is just OK for web and 4X6 prints. The Olympus can save an uncompressed TIFF, but that means a 4-5MB file gets generated. Adds to the image quality, but you'll want more storage. Beyond this, remember that digital zoom is just for advertizing. I mean to say that digital zoom is worthless. If you use the digital zoom, it drastically reduces the resolution of the image. You can do this stuff with Photoshop or the Gimp anyway, so you won't miss not using it in the camera. Optical zoom is valuable for taking good pics. You will pay for it, as well as a high resolution CCD. I mention the starter cameras because they were already brought up by way of the Mavicas and the D-340R. If you want to know about the other offerings (like Nikon 950 or Olympus C-2000 which are highly respected), I suggest you look at the following sites: www.steves-digicams.com photo.askey.net www.megapixel.com www.dcresource.com Also, prices are much lower on the Net than in the retail stores. Check out www.computers.com for price lists. If you buy it retail, you're nuts. Wade Curry I am not speaking for Hewlett Packard.
