Remote Capture is the process of using a computer or other device to control your camera. My main camera is a Canon 20D, and it came with bundled software, known oddly enough as Remote Capture, that can control the 20D (as well as many other Canon cameras) from a PC.
Unfortunately, I do not have a lap top running windows that I can use to run the software. I do have an eee pc though. Have you heard of the eee pc? It is a small netbook made by Asus that was released in 2007. It is like a small laptop computer, with small (7 inch) lcd screen and a full, but small, qwerty keyboard. The fact that it is small would make it a great remote capture device and also while the screen is small, it absolutely dwarfs the screen on the 20D. I am hoping that the eee pc can be configured to display each photo as they are shot and also scroll through the images on the camera.
The eee pc runs a scaled down version of Linux made especially for the eee pc. Canon's remote capture program won't work on it so I am looking for other solutions.
There are Linux programs available that should do the trick - specifically gphoto2 with gtkam front end. The only problem was that I couldn't get them to run on my eee pc using the current operating system.
My current idea is to install eeebuntu Linux (this is a special version of the popular Linux distro Ubuntu made especially for the eee pc). I am leaning toward eeebuntu because I run the full ubuntu distro on my desktop pc and I like it. Ubuntu tends to be easier to install programs on then the default eee pc Xandros Linux, and I understand that gphoto2 and gtkam will work with Ubuntu.
So over the next few weeks I will try to find some time to complete this project and then put it to use capturing some photos!.
Wish me luck!
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