Arcgh. I needed to extract some images from a digital camera we used today (first day of kindergarten for my son and heir, so photos were required, the APS camera film hid from us, we took our old Casio QV-11 as well as my Nikon 8008).
So how to get the pictures out? Hmm, no modern Macs have serial ports, and this camera predates USB, so that’s out. I have used gPhoto before, but for some reason it failed to establish a serial connection. OK, I’ll see what I can do in Windows.
Hmm, the software that came with the ^*&^(*&)() camera doesn’t work: issues with the serial port. Now I’m getting annoyed. Windows says it can see the camera in its troubleshooting mode, so I Google up a freeware application from a UK software design consultancy, and by gum, it works. No serial issues, no whinging, just images, 78 of them (over a serial line, that takes a while).
Now, obviously the serial port is fine, so what happened? Why did two guys who did this just as proof of concept succeed where Casio and the gPhoto team were stymied? It’s especially annoying that gPhoto worked in the past and doesn’t now.
Hmm, so now I tried the Casio software and it worked. So once again, I have to wonder how these other guys managed to make this work, such that it works with other applications now. I did some power-cycling that presumably cleaned up any lingering connections, yet it failed until I tried QV (the freeware thing I found).
Interesting, in a frustrating sort of way.