Problems with USB (Canon Powershot S5 and Pentax Optio E40)
 

I have a Canon Powershot S5 and I wanted to know are there anyways of copying off photos and video directly off of the camera. If not is there a way of doing the same with a Pentax Optio E40. These are the only two cameras I have that can read SDHC cards. The only other way I have is using a USB card reader.

Are any of these methods possible, and if so how do I use any of them?

If you have a card reader, this is very simple. The card appears as an external hard drive. Mount the drive, then use your favorite file manager to copy the files. I use KDE and Mandriva 2008.1 (Spring edition). All I do is hot plug the card reader, Mandriva pops up a 'What do you you want to do with new media', I select open in Konqueror, navigate with Konq, drag and drop the pics. That is it.

You may be able to use a USB connection with those cameras directly. My Nikon works O.K. My camera supports PTP and mass storage. It has been a while, I think I use PTP to transfer files directly from the camera. Read your manuals for more info on what they support.

There are programs like Digikam that will work with many cameras. It all depends on what your cameras support. If you have card readers, go that way first.

'gthumb' is able to download images and videos directly from cameras via USB. Connecting the camera on USB and turning it on will actually bring up the default image-handling application for the system on most major contemporary Linux distros. Works fine on Fedora, I have no doubt it will work on other distros in a very similar way.

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