Using A Digital Camera with FreeBSD

I decided to try to get my Canon Powershot S40 digital camera working with my FreeBSD laptop. I found that plugging in the USB cable only yielded this entry in /var/log/messages:

ugen0: Canon Inc. PowerShot S40, rev 1.10/0.01, addr 2

The ugen driver provides support for all USB devices that do not have a special driver, according to its man page. Running usbdevs showed the camera connected to the laptop:

sudo usbdevs -dv

Controller /dev/usb0:

addr 1: full speed, self powered, config 1, UHCI root hub(0x0000),

 Intel(0x0000), rev 1.00

  uhub0

 port 1 addr 2: full speed, self powered, config 1,

 PowerShot S40(0x3056), Canon Inc.(0x04a9), rev 0.01

   ugen0

 port 2 powered

Unfortunately, I did not see the dymanic creation of a device like /dev/da0 that might have let me mount the camera and read files from it. (The problem was discussed in this thread.) I turned to the ports tree and found graphics/gphoto2, which I installed as a package:

orr:/home/richard$ sudo pkg_add -vr gphoto2

When done I followed the Gphoto2 documentation. First I checked for available ports:

orr:/home/richard$ gphoto2 --list-ports

Loading camera drivers from '/usr/lo... |                     \   2.0%          

Devices found: 1

Path                             Description

--------------------------------------------------------------

usb:                             Universal Serial Bus            

Next I searched for cameras. I found that I needed to run some of these commands as root using sudo:

orr:/home/richard$ sudo gphoto2 --auto-detect

Loading camera drivers from '/usr/lo... |                     \   2.0%          

                                                                                

Model                          Port            

----------------------------------------------------------

Canon PowerShot S40            usb:            

Once I found the camera I discovered what Gphoto2 thought of it:

orr:/home/richard$ sudo gphoto2 --summary

Loading camera drivers from '/usr/lo... |                     \   2.0%    

                                                                                      

Detected a 'Canon:PowerShot S40'.

Camera summary:



Camera identification:

  Model: Canon:PowerShot S40

  Owner: 



Power status: on battery (power OK)



Flash disk information:

  Drive D:

  256'352'256 bytes total

  207'917'056 bytes available



Time: 2004-10-31 11:51:51 (host time -1 seconds)

Now I could find files on the camera:

orr:/home/richard$ sudo gphoto2 --list-files

Loading camera drivers from '/usr/lo... |                     \   2.0%   

       Detected a 'Canon:PowerShot S40'.

There are no files in folder '/'.

There are no files in folder '/DCIM'.

There is one file in folder '/DCIM/106CANON':

#1     IMG_0700.JPG               rd   921 KB image/jpeg

There are 43 files in folder '/DCIM/107CANON':

#2     IMG_0703.JPG               rd  1019 KB image/jpeg

#3     IMG_0704.JPG               rd  1278 KB image/jpeg

#4     IMG_0705.JPG               rd   885 KB image/jpeg

#5     IMG_0706.JPG               rd   929 KB image/jpeg

...edited...

There are no files in folder '/DCIM/CANONMSC'.

When I found a file I wanted, I retrieved it:

orr:/home/richard$ sudo gphoto2 --get-file 38-39

Loading camera drivers from '/usr/lo... |                     \   2.0%       

Detected a 'Canon:PowerShot S40'.

Downloading 'IMG_0741.JPG' from folder '/DCIM/107CANON'...

Receiving data... |                                           \   0.5% 

Saving file as IMG_0741.JPG

After the files were downloaded to my laptop I was able to manipulate them using my preferred file editing programs. I removed the USB cable from the laptop and got this message from the kernel:

ugen0: at uhub0 port 1 (addr 2) disconnected

ugen0: detached

There's a graphical application for Gphoto2 called Gtkam but I got errors in the pango library when I tried to use it.