Dire camera situation 2017

Everything camera related. Includes triggers, batteries, power supplies, flatbeds and sheet-feeding scanners, too.

Moderator: peterZ

dtic
Posts: 464
Joined: 06 Mar 2010, 18:03

Re: Dire camera situation 2017

Post by dtic »

duerig wrote: 29 Aug 2018, 11:35ELPH 180 cameras are now supported by CHDK.
Nice! I see from this chdk forum post that it also has filewrite/remoteshoot support. Which means it should work with chdkptp. Which means it should also work with TwoCamControl.
L.Willms
Posts: 134
Joined: 21 Sep 2016, 10:51
E-book readers owned: Tolino Shine
Country: Germany
Location: Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Re: Dire camera situation 2017

Post by L.Willms »

duerig wrote: 29 Aug 2018, 11:35 ELPH 180 cameras are now supported by CHDK.
What is Canon's name for the "ELPH 180" beyond the USA?

Ah, found it in the forum discussion linked to by Duerig: Ixus 175
marcpolster
Posts: 1
Joined: 24 Sep 2018, 06:49
Number of books owned: 0
Country: USA

Re: Dire camera situation 2017

Post by marcpolster »

I embarked on the CHDK journey recently to help a non-profit with fragile books to scan. I put blinders on and didn't realize the situation was dire.

My question: what modern "inexpensive" new camera (and associated software) I can buy from Amazon would allow me to 1) remotely take pictures, 2) allow me to see the scene before the photo is shot, and 3) allow me to move the photo to an attached or networked Mac?

I built a USB remote to fire two cameras, dug into CHDK, and bought two Canon cameras (IXUS115 and IXUS105) to test. My remote button fires both cameras but the photo is not saved onto the SD.

Realizing I might have reached a dead end, I'm wondering what the goto solution is halfway through 2018 for cameras suitable for such a scanner.

Any suggestions? Is gphoto the right path? Should I struggle more with CHDK?

Thanks!
dpc
Posts: 379
Joined: 01 Apr 2011, 18:05
Number of books owned: 0
Location: Issaquah, WA

Re: Dire camera situation 2017

Post by dpc »

Just something to try: Does the camera write to the SD card if you don't use your remote trigger?

I looked at using CHDK years ago with my Canon point-and-shoot cameras and got frustrated and bought a pair of Canon DSLRs and used their SDK to control the cameras with my scanner from some software that I wrote. There's still people that use it to do the sort of things you're asking about, so hopefully they'll chime in and recommend the cameras that support remote live view and image capture.

Canon provides software (EOS Utility) to remotely control their DSLR cameras for free but I think it only works with a single camera attached to a PC. Don't know if they have something like that for their mirrorless cameras (M50, M100, etc.), or if you could launch multiple instances of their app to control more than one camera. Breeze Systems (breezesys.com) has software for controlling multiple Canon DSLRs (and M50) but it's not cheap. They used to have a product that worked with the less expensive Canon point-and-shoot cameras (PSRemote), but its been discontinued. There was also some remote software for Canon point-and-shoot cameras called Cam4You (alkenius.no-ip.org) that allowed some rudimentary camera control remotely over USB from a PC. Don't know if there's anything in either Canon's official EOS SDK or these other products mentioned above that supports MacOS.
Post Reply