Nikon D40 and F-Spot

English Applications
#1

I’m having a problem with F-Spot not seeing my Nikon D40. I’m using 11.1 64-bit, and KDE 4.1.

When I plug in the camera (USB), the Device Notifier pops up and says the camera is connected, correctly identifying it as a D40. digiKam has no trouble recognising the camera and copying files from it to my system. However, when I fire up F-Spot (0.5.0.3), although the program starts normally, the Import Source dropdown shows “No camera detected”.

I would very much like to use F-Spot as this seems closest to Adobe Lightroom that I’ve used under Windows.

Does anyone have any clue as to why this might not be working? I have searched, but have found no tips that solve the problem.

Many thanks in advance.

John

#2

Well, I have a Canon 20d, and it will only communicate if I tell it to use PTP (the other option is “normal”: likely a proprietary Canon protocol).

Apparently the D40 also has two setting for USB - PTP and “mass storage”. Mass storage mounts your camera up like a USB hard disk. Check your camera?

#3

Many thanks JJMT - I’ll give this a try either tonight or tomorrow (depending on time).

#4

It turns out - not that I ever fiddled with it - that the camera was already set to mass storage. I set it to PTP, and F-Spot picked it up straight away.

Many thanks again!

John

#5

It has been recommended by many people at the Canon SLR forums that it is much better on the camera to remove the memory card and directly connect it to a card reader and not use the camera to transfer as to reduce wear on the camera.

In other words let the camera focus (pun intended) on writing all of your pics at full speed and let the memory card be the transfer device.

#6

Interesting point wshawn - I’ll bear that in mind, as it may well be right :).

#7

I would think that inserting and removing the memory card would cause more mechanical wear on the contacts, the door, the spring, etc. of the memory slot, than the electronic “wear” of uploading pictures from the camera. Are they suggesting that electrons get old and tired going through the wire too many times? :wink: