Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Welcome to the Power Users community on Codidact!

Power Users is a Q&A site for questions about the usage of computer software and hardware. We are still a small site and would like to grow, so please consider joining our community. We are looking forward to your questions and answers; they are the building blocks of a repository of knowledge we are building together.

Camera USB device in file explorer - why so slow?

+4
−0

I have been using my 10-year-old small Samsung compact camera until recently. Whenever I plug that one into a Windows laptop, it shows up as a regular mass storage device just providing files, no-nonsense, and, despite the age of this thing and USB2.0 only, at an adequate speed. I also can use any image viewing software I like, efficiently.

I got a somewhat newer, bigger Camera, Canon EOS 2000d.

When I connect that with USB, it does not show up as a regular mass storage device, but as a special camera device. And like that, it is absolutely horrible to use.

It takes forever to show the thumbnails - or even just the names in the detail view of a folder.

If I try to use e.g. XnView instead of the Windows built-in image browser, I can look at only one picture, but not use the PgUp/Down keys to switch between the images in the currently open folder - because actually, Windows creates a tempoary file locally, and then calls XnView to open that, instead of directly the folder on the Camera's SDcard.

That's insane and makes access to the cam worse by at least an order of magnitude vs. my old cheap cam.

Is there any way of making this less horrible, or is it just inherent in this device class that is apparently used? (and what did they smoke who came up with that... There's nothing wrong with good ol' mass storage device... or is there?)

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

1 comment thread

Device drivers? (1 comment)

2 answers

+7
−0

I suspect that the camera is presenting itself as a USB PTP or MTP device. The fact that it is identified as a camera and not as a storage device certainly points in this direction.

A quick check of the user's guide available online for the EOS 2000D did not reveal any obvious way to turn MTP support on or off, but that's a first thing you can look into in more detail. Such a setting might be hidden in the advanced section, and it might be labelled differently (for example, it could be described as a "device class" or something like that), so you may have to do a little bit of sleuthing.

Failing that, you can use a separate card reader to make the storage card used by the camera available to the computer without even involving a camera. The manual says that if you go this route, then you should copy the DCIM folder onto the computer. This is what I have been doing for ages personally and it works splendidly. For the most consistent, most reproducible results, you may want to go this route anyway.

While the camera manual seems to recommend using Canon's own software to transfer pictures, this doesn't seem to be a requirement at all, so as long as you stay with storing photos as JPEG images (which basically means not setting the camera to RAW), you should be able to use any normal image-handling software to copy and work with the images; and there are several third-party raw image processing tools available if you want to have a raw format workflow but not use Canon's own software.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

+2
−0

This is a function of how the device presents itself over the USB, and also possibly what file format it stores pictures in. Some modern cameras can be switched between being a "camera" or "file system" over the USB. Check the user manual.

To guarantee you see the pictures in part of your file system, take the memory card out of the camera and connect it via a separate "card reader". That takes all the camera's fancy firmware out of the loop and lets the OS see the raw files.

One problem you might run into then is that the files are not in a standard format. If so, you'll have to use software from the camera manufacturer to read the image files and convert them to something standard, like JPG or TIF. Camera manufacturers generally have free software for that purpose, although it can be tedious to use if you just want at the raw image data to use your own software with.

High end image manipulation software often has built-in support for the proprietary formats of major camera manufacturers. Such programs can then read the raw files off the flash card directly.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

0 comment threads

Sign up to answer this question »