Adjusting digital camera to become webcam

I would like to adjust / adapt my digital camera to act as a webcam.

I have a simple (chap) webcam but I am not happy with quality of photo and as I already posess digital camera, perhaps I can use it instead?

Does anybody knows how to go about it ?

Thanks in advance for your time

 

it can be done only if your digicam can act as a webcam
there must be a USB cable that comes with your digi cam just plug and play

 

hi vic,
thanks for this info - i will check , but i think my digicam has no that option.
perhaps i can plug in some kind of add-on or similar?

 

I agree with Vic.

I've not heard of an add-on, but I know some models of camera come with USB connectivity.

I think Sony offers some entry level models, or did, pitched as webcam capable.

You are right that most webcams offer very poor quality.

 

I think my camera comes with software that allows it to act like a webcam, once plugged in via usb.

 

i can connect my camera with usb port to extract photos to my hard drive.

perhaps i can use that connection for vice-versa function?

thanks for your time and efforts to help me

 

Chris Breeze at Breeze Systems sells a product called PSRemote that will can be setup to control some Canon digital cameras from a PC via USB. It has an intervalometer built into it and will save JPG directly to the hard drive. It would work just fine as a webcam if it would only save the JPG files ucsing the same name; overwritting each file as the pictures are captured. I have not figured out how to get this software to do that.

If anyone has a bright idea on how to solve this problem please post a reply.

http://www.breezesys.com/

 

hi turbines,
this seems as an interesting solution for sophisticated webcam.
thanks for the link - i hope somebody will have hint how to achieve what we need ...
let me check their forum too..

 

Chris Breeze advised that this should be a simple problem to solve with a batch file. He said to use the PSRemote command line editor option to run a batch file to: #1 rename the JPG files as they are taken and #2 use the batch file to upload to website using Windows FTP command line. This does sound like a good solution.

I haven't a clue how to go about writing such a batch files as simple as it may be.

 

I guess that batch processing can be done in Photoshop?

Here is link I found : http://www.creativemac.com/2002/04_apr/tutorials/psbatch.htm

Also, I found on the Chris Breeze's forum some info about using Zone Trigger software for webcam purpose: http://www.breezesys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1726 . Perhaps this can be some kind of solution?

 

Photoshop can perform some specific batch operations on specific types of image files. That's not what we need here. We need a batch file which perform two separate operations sequentially.

It would be run automatically from PSRemote each time an image is captured to the hard drive directory. The batch file would then;

1) autoload the file to the web site directory via ftp overwrite the current image and then

2) delete the file from the local directory where it was saved by PSRemote. This readies the directory for the next image that will be captured. Then the batch file runs again

This should be quite easy for someone familiar with ftp and batch file commands.

I have searched high and low and am quite surprised someone hasn't already done this.

 

Ok I got this to work with the following bat and txt files

[psremoteput.bat]
ftp -ssremoteput.txt
exit

[psremoteput.txt]
open home.xxx.rr.com
myusername
mypassword
lcd D:\PSremote
put 0001.jpg
quit

Now I just need to figure out how to delete the orignal 0001.jpg file

 

Got it working. I added a line to the batch file to delete it from the local directory after uploading and so it now looks like this;

ftp -ssremoteput.txt
DEL 0001.JPG
exit

Note also that the images saved by PSRemote, the batch and text files all need to be in the same directory. My directory is D:\PSRemote but you can put anywhere you like.

Also note that PSRemote saves the files using the convention 000X.JPG (with the extension in CAPS). It's case sensitive so you will need to use that same convention in the text, batch file and in the html for you web page.

So then the text file ends up looking like this;

open home.triad.rr.com
myftpusername
my ftppassword
lcd D:\PSRemote
put 0001.JPG
quit

I have my PSRemote intervalometer set to snap a shot every five minutes so it's like a real slow scan webcam. The camera is powered with the AC adapter and I have the battery removed.

I don't have the camera mounted where I want it yet but you can check back here from time to see the results.

http://home.triad.rr.com/turbines/webcam.html

I am pretty happy with the results. The picture is much sharper than those captured with my video webcam. I hope this is some help