[olug] Digital Cameras and Linux

[Mike Hostetler]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 10:42:40PM -0600, Jeff Hinrichs wrote:
> As to digital photography, stay away from connecting your camera to the
> computer.  Get a media reader for the particular media your camera uses. 
> Make  sure you can operate the media reader via linux by mounting it as a
> removable drive.  Copy the pics off and when happy delete them off the
> media.  Let the camera format the media when necessary.

The media reader is a wonderful idea!  I didn't think about that.

My idea (at this point, with not even having a camera!) is to have the
camera take the large resolution shots, and then have a Python script w/
PIL re-size them along with making a much smaller one for web use.  With a
media reader, I would just run the script on that "drive".

> Most media readers are USB or firewire.  Go fire if you are going to be
> shooting alot as it is faster but $$.  USB is still faster than serial.

Yeah, I wouldn't get serial -- I'd probably stick with USB, because Fire
really is much more $$$.

> This way you don't have to fool with getting your camera to work with the
> OS or take your camera out of the action to download pics.  You get more
> cameras to choose from.

I did that with my brother-in-law's camera (they got back from a trip and
were staying at our house, and wanted to show us some pictures they took).
It took all afternoon to figure to get it working. (Though, for the record,
USB wasn't even configured on my box).

> Go for at least 2megapixels, 4-5 is mid range now.  I've got a 4Mpx Nikon
> that I'm happy with.  Uses compact flash.  Cheap media, slower write time
> than film.  I'd also recommend to go with a few smaller (32/64mb ) cards
> instead of a big 256MB.  The bigger the card the longer the access time.

Compact flash is a requirement because of the price.  I didn't think about
getting several smaller cards than a few bigger ones -- it makes sense,
though.

> Have fun and do your homework before you buy.

That's what I keep learning.

Thanks for the great info.

-- mikeh