The Casio Exilim is very nice; 7 MP, SD cards, slim, USB etc The Sony Cybershot's always get good reviews too. I also recommend grabbing a copy of What Camera to have a look at their buyers guide, and their roundup reviews.
Richard
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of samwise Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 3:21 PM To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: [ALUG] Digital Camera recommendations
Anyone got any recommendations or hints / tips for buying a digital camera. Looking at a budget of £100 - £150, for general all-round use - preferably fairly compact.
What should I look for when buying a camera for use with Linux? What are the main open source apps and what do they need the camera to support?
Is one that connects as a USB mass storage good enough? or should I expect more integration than that with the right camera?
Any recommended manufacturers which work best with open source software?
Amazon link recommendations welcome!
TIA,
Peter.
P.S. I'm running Debian Testing, if that makes a difference.
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Interesting. I have no real desire to use it as a webcam (though that might be an added bonus). General consensus from here and another forum I posted on, is that USB storage is all that's required and RAW support may be out of my price range.
I did have someone suggesting that support by gPhoto (altho I do mainly use KDE) might be worth looking for:
http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
Is this app any good? Does it do anything other than facilitate copying files from the camera (in which case USB storage should be good enough)?
For the record I have a card reader which should cope with most formats (when I get it working with Linux). I also have a video camera which takes MemorySticks and my phone takes RS/DV-MMC cards (soon to change but I have one of the cards).
Peter.
On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 16:55 +0100, samwise wrote:
Interesting. I have no real desire to use it as a webcam (though that might be an added bonus). General consensus from here and another forum I posted on, is that USB storage is all that's required and RAW support may be out of my price range.
I did have someone suggesting that support by gPhoto (altho I do mainly use KDE) might be worth looking for:
http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php
Is this app any good? Does it do anything other than facilitate copying files from the camera (in which case USB storage should be good enough)?
For the record I have a card reader which should cope with most formats (when I get it working with Linux). I also have a video camera which takes MemorySticks and my phone takes RS/DV-MMC cards (soon to change but I have one of the cards).
Peter.
I cant advise on the Camera, as I have an Eos 400D :-)
However, gphoto works quite well for getting pictures off the camera, and for reading and editing the EXIF data. This is a little slower than putting my Compact Flash card straight into my card reader.
It seems the newer Canon digital cameras speak PTP protocol (as do a lot of other brands), which may be useful if you want to remote control your camera from your PC.
Check if the camera supports PictBridge printing, as you may be able to plug it straight into your printer, and select what you want to print that way.
Picasa is available for Linux, which is quite good for basic touch ups. http://picasa.google.com/linux/
The Gimp and cinepaint are also good.
HTH
Chris
** samwise samwise@bagshot-row.org [2007-08-13 17:05]:
Interesting. I have no real desire to use it as a webcam (though that might be an added bonus). General consensus from here and another forum I posted on, is that USB storage is all that's required and RAW support may be out of my price range.
Personally I'd forget ideas of webcam since, much like directly connecting the camera to the computer for data transfer, it will result in the camera getting very hot. This may have changed in more recent cameras perhaps, but given the ever increasing resolutions and compactness of digital cameras this isn't something that has improved. I've always worked on a card reader to transfer pictures across as it removes any worries about compatibilities, even my PCMCIA SD card reader worked out of the box with Linux back in 2002. For my desktop I've stuck a reader into a spare 3.5" bay as it saves the hassle of matching the mountpoint which changes depending on the order of insertion of USB devices - or did when I last played with it anyway!
<snip>
For the record I have a card reader which should cope with most formats (when I get it working with Linux). I also have a video camera which takes MemorySticks and my phone takes RS/DV-MMC cards (soon to change but I have one of the cards).
** end quote [samwise]
I favour SD format cameras myself, but this is highly likely to be due to the fact that I had a DV camcorder that used MMC/SD cards for digital stills before I ever had a digital camera. This was then aided by my serious bias towards Nikon cameras, and my little digital compact (5200) also uses that format, as does my Palm - so there's a distinct advantage in keeping to a single card format. I was most dissapointed to find out that the Nikon DSLR cameras used Compact Flash, but they seem to have rectified that at the lower end of their range, so when I finally manage to afford one I know pretty much where my pennies will be headed :)
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Chris Glover -
Paul Tansom -
Richard Bensley -
samwise