scan-manager -- python app for controlling tethered cameras

[Fab52]

Hi Og,

I do more testing this afternoon.

Here's the result:

It take a long time to load the photos (8 frames take a minute) at the start of the app.

The viewfinder have to be turn off and on after each capture but I can leave it off and continue to capture...

I was unable to save the capture in raw or fine jpeg no matter if I change the setting the capture have been saved in basic jpeg (440kb instead of 4.5mb and no raw capture).

There is a lot of infos (84 lines) under the tab "Capture Setting" difficult to figure out ... What we need there should be the basic infos of our capture setting... I think we have all the menu of the d90 under this tab

I will try it again tomorrow...

See You!!!

Fab

[og200]

Thanks for the testing -- it's great that its at least capturing images and downloading them on the D90.

The viewfinder have to be turn off and on after each capture but I can leave it off and continue to capture...

I've added code to switch the viewfinder off before shooting and then back on again so that will be in the next release.

I was unable to save the capture in raw or fine jpeg no matter if I change the setting the capture have been saved in basic jpeg (440kb instead of 4.5mb and no raw capture).

I haven't tried shooting RAW with this yet; downloading the RAW captures may require some different handling with gphoto. I'll plug the D80 back in on Monday and have a go with RAW and with fine JPEGs.

We won't be able to do post-processing on the RAW files in any case I think unless they're first converted to JPEG, but we should be able to download the RAW files as they're shot and store them (I think we'll need to shoot RAW+JPEG for the previews to work).

It take a long time to load the photos (8 frames take a minute) at the start of the app.

I'll look at why it's being so slow in loading existing images -- 8 x 12MP JPEGs shouldn't take anything like 60secs to thumbnail. I will make it cache thumbnails in any case but that's too slow for normal shooting.

I'm also planning to take out the calibration and probably the cropping too for now; it complicates the app and slows down shooting and in cany case I think it should all happen offline, after shooting has finished. It'll go in some sort of separate post-processing app/mode, or I might just write out BSW configuration files and let BSW do this for us.

There is a lot of infos (84 lines) under the tab "Capture Setting" difficult to figure out ... What we need there should be the basic infos of our capture setting... I think we have all the menu of the d90 under this tab

Yes, the app basically probes the camera to see what capabilities it has and then displays every setting it can see. I've been thinking of how to tidy this up, and the best way I can come up with is to let the user choose which camera settings should. I prefer this to just deciding which are the important ones in advance. That requires a far more involved configuration system but seems worth doing.

[Fab52]

Hi,

Thanks for the testing -- it's great that its at least capturing images and downloading them on the D90.

I'm more then happy to be able to capture and download with the D90 using SM.

I've added code to switch the viewfinder off before shooting and then back on again so that will be in the next release.

I notice this morning, if I choose jpeg basic, normal or fine compression the viewfinder does'nt freeze... I got the problem when I choose Raw+basic jpeg , Raw+ normal jpeg or Raw+ Fine jpeg.

I'll look at why it's being so slow in loading existing images -- 8 x 12MP JPEGs shouldn't take anything like 60secs to thumbnail. I will make it cache thumbnails in any case but that's too slow for normal shooting.

Hummm....I empty the frame folder, the waiting still the same, look like connecting time, no mouse control during that time....

See you
Fab

[og200]

this is what i've used for chdk camera control,
a small warning when you start with chdk

• there are a lot of race condition
• memory on this cameras is small, scripts fail often due to memory shortage

Thanks again for this stuff Gerard.

I had some success today talking to CHDK via PTP directly (using pyusb + libusb-win32) -- runniung LUA scripts that way is slow but not impossible. It's never going to be as pretty as direct PTP control of a camera that supports remote control natively, but it's not looking too bad. I'll bear in mind your warnings about CHDK though.

I'll try to write a basic CHDK wrapper for ScanManager soon. It won't be that sophisticated but it people should be able to add LUA scripts to it to make do what they want it to do.

I haven't quite got the live viewfinder stuff working on CHDK but it should be possible; it will need a lot of testing though as the image conversion works differently for different types of camera.

[og200]

I've got a CHDK layer working, including live view -- there's no UI yet but I've checked in a library and some test code (.\backend\chdk in the soruce tree).

AFAIK live view isn't supported yet in the main CHDK trunk. I downloaded the CHDK-shell GUI and had it build me a version of the reyalp-ptp-live branch for my A640 to try it out (the shell does the build very smoothly but selecting the branch was a bit tricky).

If anyone has Python 2.7 and installed and wants to try the test it's .\backend\chdk\test.py in the latest SVN HEAD. (You'll also need to install the Python Imaging Library (PIL) here and pysub.) In the end I had to build a C extension based on some code from chdkptp to transform the image data stream coming from CHDK on the camera into something usable.

[tkr]

OG,
Is the liveview code that you list, specific to the A640, or will it run on my A480 as well ?

Tks,
TKR

[og200]

Is the liveview code that you list, specific to the A640, or will it run on my A480 as well ?

It's should be generic (it has code to handle different kinds/sizes of live view image) but I haven't tested it with other models. As I said, AFAIK live view only works with the reyalp-ptp-live branch of CHDK. The A480 is listed as an option for that branch on the CHDK-shell so it would just take a few clicks to build it and put it on an SD card.

If there's much demand for it I should be able to work this code up into a proper backend for ScanManager to support CHDK-enabled cameras.

[og200]

I've uploaded a new build 0.4.7. The main change is that it now supports shooting RAW+JPEG on cameras that support it.

It can't actually process the raw files, but it will store them alongside the JPEGs and manage the JPEG and RAW files together when you delete/reorder the pages.

[daniel_reetz]

I'm really excited to try out the latest version, hopefully this weekend. Thanks for all your work on scan-manager!

[Fab52]

Hi Og,

I download and test the v. 0.4.7 this morning.

Here's the report:

Nikon D90 DSLR

I was able to capture and save Basic+NEF(raw) direct to the laptop.

So this is working... but no matter if I set image quality at Fine or Normal+ NEF it's been saved at the Basic quality (460 kb or 96dpi). I also try saving Jpeg without NEF at different quality level but was unable, only Basic quality. I also notice that none of the photos have exif file. Is it normal???

I try to change the following setting to see if it's possible to save the photos on the camera card :

Record Media : SDram
Capture Target: Internal Ram

This was the original setting, so this is working fine, no viewfinder freeze after the capture. The image was saved on the laptop, not on the camera card.

Record Media: Card
Capture Target: Internal Ram

No viewfinder freeze after the capture, but i could not find what is the difference between the original setting... The image was saved on the laptop, not on the camera card.

Record Media: Card
Capture Target: Memory Card

Unable to capture and viewfinder freeze after pressing the capture button.

Record Media: SDram
Capture Target: Memory Card

Unable to capture and viewfinder freeze after pressing the capture button.

Could you explain what this setting is for ???

I hope this report give you some clue....

Fab