Re: Digital Cameras

[Craig Dickson <crdic@pacbell.net>]

Rob Ransbottom wrote:

> I am interested in getting a digital camera to put
> some pictures on some websites.  I'd like a completely
> Debian based solution.  (I expect to move to woody soon.)
> 
> The Sony CD Mavica MVC-CD250 is appealing because
> it seems that I can read the pictures on any
> /dev/cdrom.  This is correct, I'm sure, but are
> there gotcha's?
> 
> I like the Nikon Coolpix 2500 because of the swivel
> lens.  The Nikon uses Compactflash.  I don't know
> about getting the pictures out of the camera or
> cf card into Linux.
> 
> I don't know about the file/filesystem/cdrom formats
> or communications cables/protocols that digital cameras use.
> 
> Any success stories or pointers to pertinent info
> appreciated.

The SanDisk SDDR-31 CF card reader works with Linux 2.4's USB Mass
Storage driver; the device appears as a removable SCSI drive. When
mounted, it is accessed as a VFAT filesystem. Copy the pictures off,
then delete them from the card to free up space.

Some other SanDisk readers are known NOT to work with Linux, because
they are not USB Mass Storage devices; I forget the product numbers
offhand, but I have the SDDR-31 and it works just fine.

I actually prefer using a CF card reader over plugging in the camera
directly, because I'd rather not have the camera turned on (and using up
its battery) just to transfer pictures. Inserting and removing CF cards
should be trivial with any well-designed camera. (I use a Canon G2,
btw.)

Here is the line from my /etc/fstab for the CF card reader:

/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1  /mnt/cf  auto  user,noauto,noexec 0 0

The first field will obviously be different if you don't use devfs, or
if you have other SCSI devices. Strictly speaking, you don't need this
at all, but I like having a constant mount point for all users who
access the CF card reader.

And here is the script that I use to move files off the CF card. You may
need to change the directory under the mount point if your camera
organizes its files differently from mine.

#!/bin/sh

mountpt=/mnt/cf

if [ "$1" = "-h" -o "$1" = "-?" -o "$1" = "--help" ]; then
  echo "Usage: cf-get [-n] [dest]"
  echo
  echo "to copy all jpeg images from a CF card to the 'dest' directory"
  echo "(which defaults to the current directory if not given)."
  echo
  echo "By default, all files on the CF card will be deleted after the"
  echo "copy completes successfully. The -n option prevents this."
  exit 1
fi

clear=1

if [ "$1" = "-n" ]; then
  clear=0
  shift
fi

dest="$1"

if [ -z "$dest" ]; then
  dest=.
fi

mount $mountpt

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  for f in `find $mountpt/dcim -name '*.jpg'`; do
    fn="`echo $f | sed -e 's/^.*\///'`"
    echo "$dest/$fn"

    cp -f "$f" "$dest"

    if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
        clear=0
    fi

    chmod 644 "$dest/$fn"
  done

  if [ $clear -ne 0 ]; then
    echo "Clearing CF card..."
    rm -rf $mountpt/*
  fi

  sync
  umount $mountpt
fi

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