[CALUG] modest linux camera: feedback

[Bryan J Smith]

Why do you want to buy from Target or Walmart?  Or Ritz Camera for that matter.  
They are overpriced and limited selection.

There are often excellent units from reputable vendors not sold there.  The US 
is very marketing-based driven, not technology-based.

I.e., it is not uncommon for one vendor to completely block distribution of 
others at retail.  Mail order is the way to go for the greatest options.

Hit dpreview and hit some of their reviews, especially the competitive ones 
where they take 4-5 models of the same class and compare.


 
----- Original Message ----

From: Walt Smith <waltechmail at yahoo.com>


Thanks for all the replies.
They were very helpful.
There were suggestions, recommendations and
facts. 

feedback:

I discovered there's a camera catalog that gets listed to
select when getting to the right menu in gthumb, but more
noticeable in digikam.  Both have the same catalog list.
Never heard of digikam before post.

The digiKam display of camera selection came up almost top
to bottom of the screen area, allowing me to rediscover the
list.  (Iteration pays off for me).  This time I paid closer
attention to what was on the list.  I tried about 30-40 
cameras.  None of the mentioned Vivitar worked.  I also
doscovered in the menu several very generic camera mentions.
I tried *all* those ( such as PTP USB Camera ).

Interestingly, Target had a few cheap "Sakar" cameras I passed up.
But several of that brand were on the list.

Identification:
I tried a lspci and didn't get squat.  Then by chance, knowing
the symetry of much "linux", I typed the letters "lsusb".
I got a USB ID: "Jeilin".  A google search showed that some work
for Jeilin drivers ( camera mfgrs/models unknown) in the kernel
driver.  I didn't research more.

The digiKam install wasn't the smoothest.
On Fedora-12, I used a local yum install ( rpm files on hard disk), and 
got some checksum error on one file. I could manually install
"the file" using rpm -Uvh blah, and following up with another yum,
got another checksum error on a different file.  Eventually all  8
needed files were installed using only rpm.  After the install,
digiKam runs fine.

What I need to do now is the obvious !.. go back to... "Target"
or Walmatr.. and make a short list of candidates and check the 
linux camera list.


thanks !!..


Walt . . . . .. . ...


      


_______________________________________________
CALUG mailing list
CALUG at unknownlamer.org
http://lists.unknownlamer.org/listinfo/calug