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Between my wife and I, we have three digital cameras. We have a Nikon Coolpix 3100, an Olympux C-700 Ultra Zoom, and a Canon Powershot S2 IS. The Nikon and the Olympus are detected as USB Mass Storage Devices, while the Canon uses Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). All were relatively straight-forward to use with Debian, once I figured it out.



As I said up above, the Nikon Coolpix 3100 and the Olympus C-700 Ultra Zoom cameras we have are detected as USB Mass Storage Devices. This means that when you connect them to a USB port on a Windows XP machine, no driver is needed, and the camera looks like another drive letter. It's almost that easy to use in Linux. Once you know where the device is, you just mount it like a DOS/Windows partition.

1. Make sure the usbcore and usb_storage modules are already loaded
   
   
   lsmod | grep usb
   
   then look for those entries.
   
   
2. Plug the camera into the USB port
   
   
3. Check /proc/scsi/scsi to determine if it has been detected. When I type
   
   
   cat /proc/scsi/scsi
   
   I see the following output for my Olympus camera:
       Host: scsi1 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
           Vendor: OLYMPUS Model: C-700UltraZoom Rev: 1.00
           Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
   
   
4. Check syslog to determine where the device is. When I type:
   
   
   tail -n 20 /var/log/syslog
   
   I see the following output:
   
   Oct 13 15:39:58 localhost kernel: 1-1: new full speed USB device using address 2
   Oct 13 15:39:58 localhost kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
   Oct 13 15:39:59 localhost kernel: Vendor: OLYMPUS Model: C-700UltraZoom Rev: 1.00
   Oct 13 15:39:59 localhost kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
   Oct 13 15:39:59 localhost kernel: SCSI device sdb: 256000 512-byte hdwr sectors (131 MB)
   Oct 13 15:39:59 localhost kernel: sdb: assuming Write Enabled
   Oct 13 15:39:59 localhost kernel: sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
   In this case, the camera is at /dev/sdb
   
   
5. Create a mount point for the camera
   
   
   mkdir /mnt/olympus
   
   
6. Mount the camera (need to be logged in as root to do this)
   
   
   mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/olympus
   
   
7. Assuming that worked, make the appropriate entry into the fstab so that my regular user account is the owner when it gets mounted
   
   
   nano -w /etc/fstab
   
   Add the following line
   
   /dev/sdb1 /mnt/olympus vfat user,noauto,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0
   assuming my userid and groupid are both 1000.
   
   
8. I repeated the same procedure for the Nikon camera. The only difference is the mount point and that the Nikon gets detected as /dev/sdc1.

After using my Olympus C700UZ camera for 4-5 years, it was time for an upgrade. Everything about the Canon Powershot S2 IS told me it was the camera for me. The only thing that made me hesitate was I knew the camera would not get detected as a USB Mass Storage Device since it uses PTP to communicate with a computer. When it arrived, I discovered that I could just plug it into a Windows XP computer, and it would still get mounted like a drive without any drivers. So, that was a huge relief. It turns out that it's almost equally easy to use in Linux (after I figured it out).

1. Install gphoto2
   
   
   apt-get install gphoto2
   
   
2. Install digikam
   
   
   apt-get install digikam
   
   
3. Plug the camera into the USB port
   
   
4. Test to see whether gphoto2 works properly with the camera
   
   
   su
   gphoto2 --get-all-files
   
   It works! All of the pictures are automatically downloaded to the current directory. That was surprisingly easy. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as a normal user, because the permissions on the USB devices aren't set to allow users to access them.
   
5. Add my user account to the camera group
   
   
   nano -w /etc/group
   
   Alter the following line
       camera:x:105:
   to read
       camera:x:105:tew
   Where "tew" is my username, and 105 is the group number.
   
   
6. Make changes to the fstab
   
   
   nano -w /etc/fstab
   
   Add the line:
       none /proc/bus/usb usbfs user,auto,devmode=0660,devgid=105 0 0
   which sets the owning group to be #105.
   
   
7. Reboot
   
   
8. Become superuser
   
   
9. Plug the camera into the USB port
   
   
10. Make sure the camera got detected.
    
    
    tail -n 50 /var/log/messages
    
    You should see entries referring to a new USB device. Also check
    
    
    lsusb
    
    and make sure there are entries there pertaining to the camera.
    
    
11. Run Digikam
    
    
12. Under the Camera menu, choose Add Camera
    
    
13. Add "USB PTP Class Camera" (my camera isn't directly supported)
    
    
14. Now when I look at the Camera menu and click on USB PTP Class Camera, I automatically see a window with thumbnail images of the pictures on the camera.
    
    Alternatively, the pictures can be downloaded as a regular user at the command line instead of by using Digikam by using the following:
    
    
    gphoto2 --get-all-files