Digital Camera digression: Software to use it?!

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His Royal Majesty King V
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Digital Camera digression: Software to use it?!

Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

All,

Well, as I mentioned before I finally got the digital camera. And, today, I decided I'd actually probably better make use of it by installing the software for it.

All well and good, except for one extremely irritating problem. The software refuses to work with Windows 98 Lite. I have to have the normal Win98 shell to use it.

Swapped that in using 98lite's utilities, but it irritates the hell out of me, not to mention that the interface for the Canon software seems a bit buggy display wise. Fortunately, only the text messages and such get distorted.

But, I figure most digital cameras have to use fairly similar formats on their memory cards, right? So, is there perhaps some free software out there that will allow me to download the pics from the camera to the computer via USB port?

I figure I'll use the camera-USB driver that comes with the camera, which essentially just starts off another application, then use whatever application I can find to retrieve the images.


Any suggestions? Thanks again in advance!
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Cthulhu8u
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Re: Digital Camera digression: Software to use it?!

Post by Cthulhu8u »

His Royal Majesty King V wrote:All well and good, except for one extremely irritating problem. The software refuses to work with Windows 98 Lite. I have to have the normal Win98 shell to use it.
By software I assume you mean the camera's driver software, which just turns the camera into a removable media drive. In other words, the camera's icon in Windows looks like a removable disk and becomes the next free letter. At least that is all that I have to do with my camera to retrieve photos from it. It becomes a drive and I drag the photos off like a hard drive.
But, I figure most digital cameras have to use fairly similar formats on their memory cards, right? So, is there perhaps some free software out there that will allow me to download the pics from the camera to the computer via USB port?
I don't know about free software to use with your camera. Each camera is like a specialized device, so a one size fits all driver is probably not going to work with your camera. The alternative is buying a USB media reader. You just insert your digital media and it turns it into a removable drive, much like what your camera should be doing already.
In Canada they are about $30(?) last time I looked, and you need to buy one specific to your media. CompactFlash, SD/MMC, Sony MemoryStick, etc. There are also multi-media drive types that act like a floppy, media reader, etc,. and go into a 5.25" bay.

From a friend's experience, I am not sure how good a solution this is. He had a media reader from SanDisk and it kept messing up his system in various ways. Even updated drivers didn't help. But that may have been computer specific, he had a P3 :D .
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His Royal Majesty King V
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Post by His Royal Majesty King V »

Hmm, now I'm not sure.

As best I can tell, the driver does one thing and one thing only . . . detect the camera, and launch a program to do the rest.

In fact, the first time I tried to install the stuff, it didn't install properly. The driver was in place, but the rest of the Canon software was not, so when the camera got hooked up, the OS brought up a list of programs and asked which one I wanted to launch whenever the camera was detected.

The media reader idea sounds intriguing though. Memory card is labeled CF, which I assume means Compact Flash (got the manual around here somewhere.....)
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DasMan2

Post by DasMan2 »

I have a friend that uses a digital camera lots, when he downloads from off the camera to the compturer's hard drive it does take some time.
Then he broke the USB cable from the camera's connection point (port) and rendered it useless....until he used a usb memory reader to drop the cameras memory stick into , to then draw out the pictures from that way .

Side benefit was it transferred so much quicker. 8)

I have a webcam (Creative Vibra type) that setups automatically a folder in "My Documents" folder an "album" to place all pictures there as I use the web cam ..not just within the Webcam's software utility.

Maybe that digital camera does something similiar and you were not aware it did setup something like that.?
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Post by Cthulhu8u »

His Royal Majesty King V wrote:Hmm, now I'm not sure.

As best I can tell, the driver does one thing and one thing only . . . detect the camera, and launch a program to do the rest.
According to your camera's manual (downloaded online from Canon), you can use WinXP to transfer images without the software. Basically, the camera becomes a removable drive. From what I can tell, in Win98 you need to use the included software. But read the manual carefully from pages 100 on, you may find out differently.
The media reader idea sounds intriguing though. Memory card is labeled CF, which I assume means Compact Flash (got the manual around here somewhere.....)
Like DasMan said, it should be a lot faster, too (forgot to mention that). Also, you don't wear out the camera's battery or the camera itself when you transfer via Media Reader. And yes, you have CompactFlash memory, so you need the appropriate reader. That is a very popular type.
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Post by Wiggy »

Those 5.25" 8 in 1 Media readers are dead cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 608&depa=0
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