gPhoto

Libgphoto2 is the core library designed to allow access to digital cameras by external (front-end) programs, such as digiKam and gPhoto2. List of officially supported cameras is available on the official website (though more may work).

This article documents the configuration of libgphoto2 to access digital cameras. Some digital cameras will mount as normal USB storage devices and may not require the use of libgphoto2.

Installation

Install the libgphoto2 package, and optionally gphoto2 to have a command line interface.

Frontend applications

• Darktable — Utility to organize and develop raw images.

https://darktable.org/ || darktable

• digiKam — Digital photo management application for KDE.

https://www.digikam.org/ || digikam

• Entangle — Provides a graphical interface for “tethered shooting”, aka taking photographs with a digital camera completely controlled from the computer.

https://entangle-photo.org/ || entangle^AUR

• gphotofs — Fuse module to mount camera as a filesystem.

http://www.gphoto.org/proj/gphotofs/ || gphotofs^AUR

• gThumb — Image browser and viewer for GNOME.

https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Gthumb || gthumb

• GTKam — Graphical GTK 2 front-end to gPhoto2.

http://www.gphoto.org/proj/gtkam/ || gtkam^AUR

• gvfs-gphoto2 — GPhoto2 backend for GVfs to mount camera as a filesystem from a file manager that supports GVfs such as GNOME Files, Nemo, PCManFM and Thunar.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/gvfs || gvfs-gphoto2

• Kamera — KDE integration for gPhoto2 cameras.

https://github.com/KDE/kamera || kamera

• Pantheon Photos — Image viewer for Pantheon.

https://launchpad.net/pantheon-photos || pantheon-photos

• Rapid Photo Downloader — Download photos and videos from cameras, memory cards and portable storage devices.

https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ || rapid-photo-downloader

• Rawstudio — An open source raw-image converter written in GTK. Supports tethered shooting with gPhoto2.

https://rawstudio.org/ || rawstudio^AUR

• Shotwell — Digital photo organizer designed for GNOME.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell || shotwell

GPhoto2 usage

GPhoto2 is a command line client for libgphoto2. GPhoto2 allows access to the libgphoto2 library from a terminal or from a script shell to perform any camera operation that can be done. This is the main user interface.

GPhoto2 also provides convenient debugging features for camera driver developers.

Quick Commands

• gphoto2 --list-ports
• gphoto2 --auto-detect
• gphoto2 --summary
• gphoto2 --list-files
• gphoto2 --get-all-files
• gphoto2 --set-config datetime=now - sets the camera to the current time

For advanced file manipulation, use

• gphoto2 --shell

Example usage with GVfs

Auto detect the connected camera and list the required port:

$ gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model                          Port                                            
----------------------------------------------------------
Canon Digital IXUS 980 IS      usb:006,011 

Now open your favorite file manager and enter the address with the found port detail "gphoto2://[usb:006,011]" - the camera will be mounted with GVfs and can be managed with the file manager.

Permission issues

Users with a local session have permissions granted for cameras using ACLs. See General troubleshooting#Session permissions if it does not work.