How to by-pass the pc camera software
Alternatives to acquire digital photos on the pc
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A visitor of this web site wrote:
"I can't find any way of getting my digital camera to work on my pc."
Indeed I admit that he could not get his pc camera software to work.
The simple answer is:
Don't worry, in most cases there is no need to get it to work!
For a somehow more extended answer, please read on below.
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With most digital cameras you get a pc camera software.
This software is intended to be used to get the photos onto the pc and to do some other tasks too.
Indeed most of these pc camera software packages are not very convenient and you can easily go without ever using them.
Easy ways to acquire your photos (i.e. to get the photos onto the computer) are described below.
The solution recommended by the camera manufacturers is to connect the camera to the pc and to use their pc camera software.
Unfortunately, the pc camera software that is delivered with the camera is often not very convenient to use or even to install.
Connecting the camera to the pc ?
Digital cameras of the first generations had to be connected via the serial port of the pc.
Most recent digital cameras can be connected via the USB port of the pc.
But there is no need to ever connect your camera to the pc!
Moreover, if you have multiple digital cameras, why would you bother to install a different pc camera software for each one ?
Isn't it more convenient to acquire the photos of any memory card with one and the same
easy method,
whatever camera they are coming from ?
Reading the memory card
Most digital cameras use some kind of replaceable memory card.
At the bottom of this page you'll find a table of the most common memory card types.
Some very simple (and cheap ?) digital cameras use built-in, NOT-replaceable memories.
Users of such a camera must connect it to the pc and must use the delivered pc camera software. Unfortunately.
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Many recent computers come with a built-in memory card drive that is able to read 6 or 8 different types of memory cards.
Every computer not older than 6 or 7 years
(that's very old in this branche!)
has an USB connector where you can connect a cheap external memory card reader,
which is able to read 6 or 8 different types of memory cards.
Copying photos with drag and drop
Put the memory card of your digital camera into such a built-in or external memory card reader.
It will be like a floppy disk or an external hard disk drive.
Under Windows this additional drive will get a letter, may be E: or F: or whatever
(like C: for you primary hard drive, D: for your CDrom drive etc...)
Take the windows explorer
(not the internet explorer) or any better file manager you use every day.
Copy your photos from the memory card drive to your hard disk drive very easily with drag and drop,
like you would do to copy any other file around. That's all what it needs!
Acquiring photos with a photo viewer
While the copy via drag and drop described above is very intuitive and easy,
it has a little disadvantage.
You copy the photos by their file name, you do not see the content of each one at copy time.
If you want only to copy the good ones and not the bad ones,
a small thumbnail of each one would be more helpful than only the file name, isn't it?
This is exactly what you get when you use
Zoner Photo Studio,
to acquire your photos.
With Zoner Photo Studio, go to the folder of your hard-disk drive where you want to copy your photos to.
Click on the menu
Acquire/From Disk Device... and check the thumbnails of the photos you want to copy.
I was doing it this way with the former Zoner Media Explorer since many months and now I do it with its successor Zoner Photo Studio.
It's very convenient.
If I change my camera one day or if a friend comes with his, I won't bother to install a different pc camera software.
I will put the memory card into my external memory card reader and just do as I'm used to.
Flash Memory Types
Below is a table with most current flash memory card types and the slots of the memory readers where they belong.
| card type | corresponding slot of the memory reader |
| CF | SM | MS | SD | xD |
| CF Compact Flash |  |
| | | |
| IBM Microdrive | |
| | | |
| SM Smart Media | | |
| | |
| MS Memory Stick |
| |
|
| |
| MMC MultiMedia Card | | | |
| |
| SD Secure Digital | | | |
| |
| xD Picture | | | | |
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