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I want to make something like they have at US dmv's where you sit down and it takes your picture, maybe like photobooth.

I want to connect a high end camera via usb, fire the camera and get the picture.

DevelopingChris
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  • This will depend on the camera and its API. As far as I know, there is no standard in the industry that will work with any USB-connected camera. Related things that might be of interest: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3409922/creating-a-usb-time-lapse-for-cannon-eos-rebel-xs-using-a-c-program http://photo.stackexchange.com/ – JYelton Feb 15 '11 at 19:12
  • Why this is tagged "image-processing"? – Ross Feb 16 '11 at 07:30

3 Answers3

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There's the Picture Transfer Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_Transfer_Protocol a nastly little thing. All the cameras I held in my hands so far, claiming they had proper PTP support failed it somewhere. But in theory one can use PTP to remote control a camera, i.e. trigger the shutter, retrieve the picture and so on.

Rater than reimplementing the whole thing I recommend you get some readily usable PTP library. There are some open source ones listed on http://ptp.sourceforge.net

datenwolf
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The easiest method is probably to use OpenCV: http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/

Paul R
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If you need a high end camera - most digital SLRs have a tethered mode where you can control the camera, fire the shutter and retrieve the image data. Each camera maker has a proprietary (but normally free) sdk.

For a webcam type camera - these normally run in video mode, you simply grab an image out f the video stream - as PaulR says - use openCV

Martin Beckett
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