[olug] Digital Cameras and Linux

[William E. Kempf]

Mike Hostetler said:
> 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".

Maybe you should look into Gallery (http://gallery.sourceforge.net). If
you have a broadband connection this is a great way to share your photos
on the Internet.  It takes care of creating thumbnails for you, allows you
to put albums together quickly, lets people easily print the photos from
the web, or even order professional prints.  Very nice web album software.

We run this for our own photos of our son (nearing 2 yrs) and will use it
for our next child, who's on the way.  I run it on my Linux machine at
home, connected through Cox, and have worked around the port blocking
issues by using a dynamic DNS service with a "web hop".  If you're
interested, I can share how that's done, though it's fairly easy to figure
out on your own if you head to http://www.dyndns.org.

>> 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.

Compact flash doesn't necessarily mean you save money, and they are slow. 
Do your research on media types... and some cameras accept multiple media
types, which will allow you some freedom in this choice.

>> Have fun and do your homework before you buy.
>
> That's what I keep learning.

A good site to go to before making any purchases is http://www.epinions.com.

-- 
William E. Kempf