UPDATE: The above link http://digikam.free.fr/hotplug/howto.html has a link to some scripts
usbcam.tar.gz. The tarball has two scripts (usbcam & digikam-hotplug) that go in /etc/hotplug/usb/. The usbcam script has a line to determine the $USER which doesn't work. Because that line doesn't work the usb device remains owned by root and is not accessible by a normal user. The line looks like this:
USER=`who |grep "\\W:[0-9]\\W " |awk '{print $1}'`
I changed it to this:
USER=`who |grep ":[0-9][0-9]$" |awk '{print $1}'`
And that works, and the device is accessible to $USER.
Also the HOWTO has no mention of how to report bugs so that is why I have posted that here.