Digital Cameras and Linux
Hello all, I know there are some photography enthusiasts on this list. I am considering purchasing a digital SLR camera. I bought a film based SLR camera about 6 years ago but it would seem it is time to move on. The previous camera was a Nikon F55 and I had purchased a few filters and a 300mm telephoto lens. Even though it was an entry level camera, I was generally happy with the quality of the images. In previous reading on this topic, I understand the opinion varies amongst manufacturers on the various file formats and how well they allow the RAW file formats to be extracted from the camera. The two brands I am mostly considering at this stage are Nikon and Canon. Would anyone care to comment if a Linux user is likely to have a preference for either and/or if there is another brand that is very Linux friendly? I like the idea of a camera that uses SD cards and possibly conventional batteries but that requirement isn't hard n fast. Additionally if there is some way to use my legacy 300m telephoto lens, that would also be cool but I'm resigned to it being incompatible. Thanks for any thoughts offered, just thought I'd ask. Cheers, Chris
I know there are some photography enthusiasts on this list.
Not really a photography enthusiast, but I had my run in with a DSLR under Ubuntu.
I am considering purchasing a digital SLR camera. I bought a film based SLR camera about 6 years ago but it would seem it is time to move on. The previous camera was a Nikon F55 and I had purchased a few filters and a 300mm telephoto lens. Even though it was an entry level camera, I was generally happy with the quality of the images.
In previous reading on this topic, I understand the opinion varies amongst manufacturers on the various file formats and how well they allow the RAW file formats to be extracted from the camera. The two brands I am mostly considering at this stage are Nikon and Canon.
Would anyone care to comment if a Linux user is likely to have a preference for either and/or if there is another brand that is very Linux friendly?
I like the idea of a camera that uses SD cards and possibly conventional batteries but that requirement isn't hard n fast. Additionally if there is some way to use my legacy 300m telephoto lens, that would also be cool but I'm resigned to it being incompatible.
I've been playing around briefly with a Nikon D60. Reading stuff off SD cards is a no-brainer. Support for RAW (package dcraw) and NEF (package denef) is available, but haven't tested it, as I used JPEGs to store the images on the SD card. I wasn't too worried about artifacts in the pictures. The nice thing about Nikon is being able to make use of the gphoto2 library (http://gphoto.sourceforge.net/, packages libgphoto2-2 and gphoto2) to access the camera remotely. Either for directly accessing the images (e.g., using gtkam as frontend or gtkam-gimp plugin in gimp) or for remotely taking pictures (using the command-line client or scripts to automate things). For more information on what cameras support remote control, see the following website: http://gphoto.sourceforge.net/doc/remote/ Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Chris O'Halloran <cmoman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In previous reading on this topic, I understand the opinion varies amongst manufacturers on the various file formats and how well they allow the RAW file formats to be extracted from the camera. The two brands I am mostly considering at this stage are Nikon and Canon.
Would anyone care to comment if a Linux user is likely to have a preference for either and/or if there is another brand that is very Linux friendly?
I have a Canon EOS450D and have had no issues using it under linux. I use an SD Card reader to transfer the raw files off the card onto the camera. I've never actually tried to connect the camera to the computer directly, but afaik it just turns up as an USB mass storage device. Most likely you want to use a card reader though, it's so much easier when you're swapping cards, etc. There are no shortage of utilities to process and manipulate the CR2 images the camera produces, the format is relatively well documented and understood.
I like the idea of a camera that uses SD cards and possibly conventional batteries but that requirement isn't hard n fast. Additionally if there is some way to use my legacy 300m telephoto lens, that would also be cool but I'm resigned to it being incompatible.
Personally I think it's a pretty tight race between Canon and Nikon when you're in the prosumer market. Both make good cameras and lenses. I used to shoot Nikon years ago, but I've a Canon guy now simply because that's what most of my friends and colleagues use these days so it's much simpler to swap, borrow and trade lenses, etc. You can usually get adaptors so you can use older lenses on new bodies (even across brands), but you'll likely not get any of the new, fancy features like auto-focus, etc. You will need to watch out for the crop factor and focal length changes as well. Cheers -- Matt Brown matt(a)mattb.net.nz Mob +353 86 608 7117 www.mattb.net.nz
I do a fair bit of photography and was at the same point as you. Forget which is compatible because you have a card reader for that (besides both work without too much trouble anyway). In the end i went for Canon purely based on the fact that more NZ'rs have them and the lenses are easy to get cheaper second hand vs the Nikon. But the Nikon is just as good. Go into the shop, play with the menus, etc and ignore the linux compatibility problems, go with the one you like best :) Liz 2009/12/3 Chris O'Halloran <cmoman(a)gmail.com>:
Hello all,
I know there are some photography enthusiasts on this list.
I am considering purchasing a digital SLR camera. I bought a film based SLR camera about 6 years ago but it would seem it is time to move on. The previous camera was a Nikon F55 and I had purchased a few filters and a 300mm telephoto lens. Even though it was an entry level camera, I was generally happy with the quality of the images.
In previous reading on this topic, I understand the opinion varies amongst manufacturers on the various file formats and how well they allow the RAW file formats to be extracted from the camera. The two brands I am mostly considering at this stage are Nikon and Canon.
Would anyone care to comment if a Linux user is likely to have a preference for either and/or if there is another brand that is very Linux friendly?
I like the idea of a camera that uses SD cards and possibly conventional batteries but that requirement isn't hard n fast. Additionally if there is some way to use my legacy 300m telephoto lens, that would also be cool but I'm resigned to it being incompatible.
Thanks for any thoughts offered, just thought I'd ask.
Cheers,
Chris _______________________________________________ wlug mailing list | wlug(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Unsubscribe: http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/wlug
participants (4)
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Chris O'Halloran -
Liz Quilty -
Matt Brown -
Peter Reutemann