Is there any Solution from another vendor? (With another Camera?) Canon does not want to support the SDK anylonger.
The Solution shoul contain live preview, zooming and configurable Flash. A c# interface would be fine.
I know, the WIA interface but it isnt powerful enough.
Have you looked into gphoto2? This only runs under Unix-like systems (Linux, BSD, and probably MacOS), so it may not help under Windows.
There's a growing group of Canon SDK users at http://canonsdk.com 1 that may help you navigate Canon camera issues and overcome Canon's lack of support.
1 Does not exist any more.
Canon has stated that they will no longer support the powershot sdk. But the EOS SDK will continue to be supported. You will need to buy EOS Cameras, but there are some in the same price range as the Gx powershots.
Another answer mentions gphoto2 however this won't work if your camera is a recent Canon PowerShot model.
This page has a listing of the cameras for which gphoto2 does and does not support remote control / capture: http://www.gphoto.org/doc/remote/
Here is Canon's complete listing of cameras with their SDK compatibilities:
http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/standard_display/sdk_homepage
As stated in the question, Canon has decided to stop supporting the SDK so their newer PowerShot cameras won't work. For a recent project I found an older supported (S70) on eBay for a reasonable price.
I had a time lapse project that consisted on over 100k exposures.
An EOS camera shutter would fail.
Canon S70 was the only camera suited for the job.
– Shachar Weis Mar 27 '11 at 12:46