Due to blackout of gphoto.org the new version of gPhoto, a library for downloading pictures from digital cameras, went completely unnoticed. This is the first new version in almost a year, and it comes with support for nearly 30 new devices.

Even though memory card readers are in many ways preferable to downloading pictures directly from cameras, there are still cases when you would be interested in gPhoto.

Tethering shooting is one of such use cases, as pretty much all digital photography software on Linux rely on gPhoto for remote capture of images with Canon and Nikon DSLRs (Pentax users are exception with pkTriggerCord written specifically for them).

As already mentioned, there's a bunch of new devices supported in the library, ranging from point-and-shoot cameras to DSLRs and even some relatively exotic beasts:

Kodak C1530

Sony DSC-HX100V, DSC-A1000, SLT-A55

Nikon CoolPix P7000, P7100, P500, L120, L23, S5100, S3100,

Nikon D2Hs, D5100

Canon EOS 10D, 1D Mark IV, 1100D, 600D

Canon PowerShot A2000IS, A3100IS,

Fuji FinePix F80EXR, X10

Apple iPad, iPhone 4

Panasonic DMC-TZ18, TZ20

Tenx tp6801 picture frames

Digital Blue Barbie Camera DC150, Cobra Digital Camera DC150, Aries Digital Keychain Camera, ITEM 128986, Lego Bionicle

Sakar Nickelodeon iCarly no. 88061, Sakar Dora the Explorer no. 88067, Jazwares Star Wars no. 15256

Also the new version can handle RAW 2 file format in some Canon cameras, and it got hold of new MIME-type suffixes such as moov, qt, qtvr, mp2, mpeg, mpe, srw, 3gp, 3g2, dif.

Nikon got a number of new configurations: videomode, scenemode, exposure program mode, effect mode, liveviewaf, liveviewaffocus, cleansensor, microphone, moviequality, autodistortioncontrol, autoisopadv renamed to minimumshutterspeed. If you are a darktable user, at least some of that should be available to you in the tethering mode.

You can download source code, or you can wait till your Linux distribution picks it. Or you can pick on your Linux distribution vendor to include it :)