Just to give a different slant to the digital camera issue. I currently own a Canon s230, D30 and a D60. These all use flash memory and I have used a Sansdisk usb attached reader to transfer images. However I prefer to use the USB connection with gphoto. My reasons for this may be irrational, but I really don't like unplugging and replugging a card with as many pins as a compact flash. If I wear out my USB connection I can still revert to reading the Flash Card directly. I think that the real question one has to ask when considering digital photography is what do you want to do on the photography side. If the aim is point and shoot, just make sure that the camera/brand selected is either supported by gphoto or uses flash with a FAT format file system. If you get into the range of digital SLR's then you have to think a little harder. Dave Frantz alluded to the poor support in Linux of a vendors RAW format. This format usually gives 12 bits instead of 8 bits per color channel. For this format you have two choices at this time. Use the vendors conversion programs under wine or investigate the good work done by Dave Coffin at http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin. The Gimp at this point in time is strictly an 8 bit per channel program although the film/movie version does support 16 bits. Photoshop 7.0 runs nicely under Crossover office on Fedora if you tweak prelink. On the printing side, Gimp-Print supports the Epson stylus photo series pretty well. What is missing however is a comprehensive color profiling system. With the advent of little color management system (lcms) and other efforts in this field this also will change. The field is also being driven by the animation studios who are switching to Linux. Hopefully they will be givers as well as takers. On a sour note it seems the Sony with the DSC-F828 has decide to encrypt its raw images: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/sony828.shtml. Basically just don't buy a camera that is not fully supported in Linux. -- David E. Tetreault davet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Manager of Technical Support 401-874-4472 OIS/TOPS, Tyler Hall University of Rhode Island Kingston RI 02881
