libgphoto2 ---------- Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of gphoto! This is libgphoto2, the successor of gphoto with lots of new features and additional camera drivers. If you miss a feature, would like to report success or failure, or have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact our mailing list. What is libgphoto2? ------------------- libgphoto2 is a library that can be used by applications to access various digital cameras. For more information on gphoto, see http://www.gphoto.org There, you can also get information on mailing lists, supported cameras, and availability of gphoto2. Another source of information is http://www.sourceforge.org/projects/gphoto where you can access our CVS server to fetch the source code of gphoto2, gtkam and GnoCam (see below). What is libgphoto2 not? ----------------------- libgphoto2 itself is not a GUI application, opposed to gphoto. There are GUI frontends for the gphoto2 library, however, such as gtkam for example. libgphoto2 can only talk to cameras the language of those it understands. That is, if you own a camera that speaks a language that isn't published anywhere and nobody has been able to figure out the meaning of the sentences, libgphoto2 cannot communicate with those cameras. Then, there are cameras supporting the so-called USB Mass Storage protocol. This is a protocol that has been published and lets you access any storage device, be it a camera or a disk connected via USB to your computer. As there are already drivers for this protocol out there, you don't need an additional library like libgphoto2. As of now, at least the following cameras seem to support the USB Mass Storage protocol: * Casio QV [2x00,3x00,8000] * Fuji FinePix S1 Pro, [1400,2400,4700]Zoom, 1300, 4500 * HP PhotoSmart 315, 618, 912 * Konica KD300Z * Kyocera Finecam s3 * Leica Digilux 4.3 * Minolta Dimage 5 & 7 * Nikon Coolpix 775, 995 * Olympus C-100, C-200Z, C-700, C-860L, C-2040, C-3020Z, C-3040Z, C-4040Zoom, D-510, E-10 * Pentax Optio 330 * Sony DSC-F505(V), DSC-P1, DSC-P5, DSC-P20, DSC-P30, DSC-F707 Again, those cameras *cannot* be accessed through libgphoto2. Other camera support a protocol called PTP or USB Imaging Devices that has been developped by Kodak and other. libgphoto2 does not fully support PTP yet and needs some testing. Here is a short incomplete list of camera that use this protocol: * HP PhotoSmart 318, 612, 715 * Kodak DC-4800, DX-3215, DX-3500, DX-3600, DX-3700, DX-3900, MC3 and all the camera that use Kodak Easy Share(tm) system. * Sony DSC-P5, DSC-F707, DSC-P30, DSC-P50, DSC-S75, DSC-S85, MVC-CD300 (all need user configuration of the camera) You may try jPhoto for ptp cameras alternatively if libgphoto2 fails. Platforms --------- libgphoto2 should compile and run on pretty much all Unix-like platforms. Additionally, there is a port for OS/2 available. libgphoto2 has _not_ (yet?) been ported to any operating system from MicroSoft. How to set up libgphoto2 ------------------------ For information on how to set up libgphoto2 and its frontends, see The gPhoto2 Manual. It is available at the following places: - At the gphoto website: http://gphoto.net/ - In the CVS module gphoto2-manual The gPhoto2 Manual includes information about setting up USB hotplugging. If you run into problems, you may also consult the FAQ (also included in The gPhoto2 Manual). Frontends --------- gphoto2 is a command line frontend which is quite powerful, especially in combination with scripts. See The gPhoto2 Manual for a short description. For the GUI lovers, there are for example gtkam (GTK based), and GnoCam (GNOME). Additionally, there are plugins for other programs available like kio_gphoto (KDE - Konqueror). Reporting Bugs -------------- Every piece of software contains errors and flaws. So does libgphoto2. When you encounter something that does not work, please do the following: 1. Find out whether this is a known problem. 2. Reproduce the problem with debug output enabled and the language set to English, so that the development team will understand the messages. You can do this by running: env LC_ALL=C gtkam if you're using the gtkam frontend or running: env LC_ALL=C gphoto2 --debug using the gphoto2 command line interface. 3. Report the problem on the mailing list with the corresponding debug output if it is small. If it is more than a few kilobytes, please don't post the complete debug output on the list.