# Digital Cameras

Related articles

- Jalbum
- HCL/Digital Cameras

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.

Note: As of libgphoto2 version 2.14.13, users do not need to be part of the `camera` group.

## GNOME

The Nautilus file manager in GNOME supports accessing digital cameras and smartphones using MTP, and has two backends: the new gvfs-mtp using libmtp, and the old gvfs-gphoto2 using libgphoto2.

Once you have `gvfs-mtp` installed, the device should just show up in Nautilus' sidebar.

## libgphoto2

Libgphoto2 is the core library designed to allow access to digital cameras by external (front end) programs, such as Digikam and gphoto2. The current 'officially' supported cameras are here (though more may work).

### Installation

Install libgphoto2 from the official repositories, and optionally gvfs-gphoto2 for Nautilus integration and gphoto2 to have a command line interface.

### Permission issues

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

If you want these permissions to work for remote (SSH) sessions too, you can use the old 'camera' group, by adding the requisite users to the deprecated camera group and create a new udev rules file as follows:

    # /usr/lib/libgphoto2/print-camera-list udev-rules version 175 group camera > /etc/udev/rules.d/40-gphoto.rules

These rules will use the group for newly added camera devices.

If the camera is not present in any udev rule, can check vendor and product id and add it. To check it just run:

    # lsusb

     ...
     Bus 001 Device 005: ID 04a9:318e Canon, Inc.
     ...

### 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`

For advanced file manipulation, use

- `gphoto2 --shell`

#### Other frontend applications for libgphoto2

- gphotofs - allow using cameras with any tool able to read from a mounted filesystem.
- darktable
- Digikam
- F-Spot
- Gthumb
- GTKam

## Troubleshooting

### Groups

Make sure that the user to which access should be granted is part of the storage group. They do not need to be in the camera group.

Category:

- Imaging