I'm thinking about digital cameras.  I know that some of them require an
application (e.g., gphoto) to talk to the camera, but I heard that some of
them present their images over USB as if the camera were a hard drive (and
the images are files, perhaps, in some standard filesystem?).  This would
be especially attractive.  (I checked our searchable database of supported
hardware; no one has reported any cameras as working/not-working.  Also,
any caveats about our pkgsrc camera packages would be welcome.)

Anyway, I was wondering what kind of experiences and recommendations
others may have.  My main concerns are:

 (a) Has to work with NetBSD, and images need to come out in a format that
     pkgsrc tools can maniuplate.

 (b) Has to (usably) support lossless images.  (I might find that JPEG
     images are often satisfacory, but want the option of lossless.)

 (c) USB would be nice, either standard or as an option.  (Unsupported
     USB would be a good hedge against the future, as long as it has SOME
     way to connect today---serial, parallel, whatever.)

     (I assume that USB either uses ``umass'' and looks like a hard drive,
     or else that, where gphoto claims USB support, for example, NetBSD's
     pkgsrc version of gphoto also supports that camera's USB option.)

The other features (price, resolution, minimum focal distance, support for
additional lenses) that I'm interested in would trade off against one
another.

The Olympus 360L looks like a pretty good camera to represent my upper
range here:

 * Standard serial, USB optional.  Does anyone know how well its USB
   option works with NetBSD (or NetBSD + pkgsrc tools)?  (gphoto
   should support this camera for serial access, anyway.)
 * Lens attachments available.
 * Around $250US to $300US, new, I think.
 * The ~1.3 megapixel resoultion is probably about as high a resolution as
   I want for now.
 * It also claims to support up to 64MB storage, so even with uncompressed
   ~1.3 megapixel images, I should be able to get a useful number of
   pictures before dumping to the computer.
 * Olympus claims an uncompressed image mode among its features.
   (Presumably, this is a lossless format.  (^&)


At the lower end, a straight serial interface with say 640x480 (or
comparable) max resolution would serve, but it would have to be cheap (I
have a feeling that I'd soon want better resolution, and wouldn't want to
feel that I'd wasted much money on something that is too much of a toy).  
I don't know of a good representive for this lower end; ``the cheapest
that works reliably and is lossless'' would probably be my pick.  (^&

(The low end is hard for me to sort out.  I've seen lots of cheap
``Internet cameras'' which may or may not work with NetBSD, and which are
designed to be hooked to the 'puter via an umbilical cord, rather than to
store pictures for later download.  I assume that about $100US is what I
should look at for a camera that stores lossless ``low-resolution''
(640x480 or so)  images.)


My intended use is mostly for making texture maps, but you never know what
kind of interests might turn up.  (^&  (No, I don't expect to need
megapixel textures; however I suspect that I'd want either extreme
closeups or higher resolution (cropped to just the section that I want) 
from a ways back for some textures.)

Any guidence w.r.t. cameras that work with our favorite OS would be
appreciated.  (Experiences re. camera reliability, and practical advice on
making texture maps also welcome---though those topics aren't so related
to this mailing list.  (^&)


Sorry for rambling on so long.  Thanks in advance for any advice.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu