digital camera

[cellio]

Well, I'm halfway there. Using the camera to take and preview pictures works just fine, and I'm even starting to figure out what some of the options really mean.

Damned if I can get them to download to my computer, though. I followed all the instructions (yes, I read the documentation). There are two parts to the installation: installing a TWAIN driver for the camera, and installing the editing software. (Never mind that I could probably use the program I'm already using to edit images from my scanner; for a baseline we'll do it their way.) No complaints during installation, but "download pictures" produces no results. So I fired up my scanner software and pointed it at my camera to see what it has to say, and I get "unknown TWAIN error". Gee, thanks. Now WTF do I do???

I guess now I get to play tech-support roulette... I predict that the camera people will blame the PhotoSuite people, the PhotoSuite people will blame the camera people, and everyone will blame my scanner (which ought to be completely unrelated, and anyway scanners are common these days).

Specs: SiPix 2100 camera, USB connection, TWAIN driver shipped with camera, image software is MGI PhotoSuite IIISE. Win98. Scanner is SCSI, not USB, so no conflicts there.

Comments

[greyman.livejournal.com]

In Win2K, I gave up on the fancy-dancy support for my Fuji Finepix 2300, and just treat it as a removable media drive. Win2K assigns it a drive letter when I plug it in, and I copy things off with Explorer. Then I can use any software I like.

Sadly, I've never had USB with Win98 so can't tell you whether this works for you.

(I've misplaced the camera-specific cable and am looking for a USB SmartMedia reader. Staples' web site claims to have one as cheap as $19.95, and K-mart's one for $30 or less, but I haven't been able to fine one in realspace.)

[cellio]

Sounds like a good idea! I wonder if I can do it under Win98. I take it the camera stores the images in some known format -- i.e. I'm not dependent on the software it came with to translate from some internal format to something like JPG? That would be handy.

This morning it occurred to me that I can eliminate one more variable. Their software has no problem reading from my scanner. So it's definitely not the software that's at fault. It could be the USB port or cable, though; this is the first time I've used USB, and I don't have another cable or USB device to test with.

But I'm betting that's not it, and if the assign-a-drive-letter trick actually works under Win98, I can eliminate that variable.