How can I force the device to be assigned to a letter?

[ChrisGreaves]

Win7 on a stand-alone laptop computer. No network.
NIKON Coolpix: A new camera. I plug it in and the photos are visible; I can drag them to my hard drive.

CoolPix.png

All my previous cameras have shown up with a drive letter on the computer , e.g. “G:”, but this camera does not.

How can I force the device to be assigned to a letter?
I have a home-grown program that looks for specific paths across all drives of the computer, and since “S3600” is not a drive letter, my program fails to find the drive.

In the code below, the line containing "\S3600\DCIM\101NIKON" fails to find the drive.

Code: Select all

Function LoadCameraTypes(strArCamera() As String)
    ReDim strArCamera(0)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\DCIM\150CANON" ' Canon A400?
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\Images\" ' CG's cell phone
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\Videos\" ' CG's cell phone
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\Camera Album\" ' CG's cell phone memory key
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\DCIM\Camera" ' Motorola/Android as USB
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\HW\Pictures\Camera album" 
    ReDim Preserve strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera) + 1)
    strArCamera(UBound(strArCamera)) = "\S3600\DCIM\101NIKON" 
End Function

It would be especially nice if this happened automatically.
In the past I've just plugged several cameras at once into the USB ports and my program has grabbed every new image of every camera.
I'd rather not have to type in special commands when it's time to upload images.

[Rudi]

Most modern cameras come with software that can help you manage, edit and categorize your images. The software can generally be setup to auto open when you plug your camera in. Have you scanned to options of the camera software to verify this option. Alternatively, windows should be able to manage this too. When you plug in the camera windows autorun should prompt with actions based on the added USB drive. Does the list not provide the option to open the software?

[jstevens]

Chris,

Have you tried "disk management" to assign the drive letter?

It is worth a try.

Regards,
John

[stuck]

Most modern cameras come with software that can help you manage, edit and categorize your images...

True but it looks as if Chris has written his own program to simply lift the pictures off the camera and onto his HDD. I don't blame him, it is after a simple file management task, you certainly don't need the bloatware the camera manufacturers provide with every camera and if you own two or more differently branded devices you certainly don't want multiple applications all trying to organise your pictures in their own way.

Meanwhile, back at Chris's question. I don't know how to make a camera appear as a drive letter because I never plug a camera into my PC/netbook. I always take the card out of the camera and insert it into a card reader. Then I open Explorer and deal with the files quickly and painlessly.

Ken

[Rudi]

Modern Media Devices do not use the now older USB Mass Storage process to transfer images to the PC; instead they use MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) and PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) to achieve the media transfers. This is quite different to the Mass Storage and as Chris discovers, the drive is added to the Media Devices section of Explorer instead of becoming a drive. Read up more details about this here...

I agree with Ken. I remove the memory card from the camera, and when I slide it into the card slot, it picks up as a drive and I can do transfers quite freely.

[ChrisGreaves]

Most modern cameras come with software ...

Hi Rudi. As does mine. A CD, but I'm with Stuck on this one - I just don't want or need more stuff competing for interrupts (or whatever they build operating systems out of nowadays).

The real puzzle to me is why, after about a dozen cameras and cell phones over the past nine(?) years, suddenly this one doesn't get a drive letter.
I'll use a workaround until I get it going ...

[DaveA]

On the newer OS's and camera's there is no need to have a drive letter.
Just look at your devices, and you will see the camera. Then walk yourself down to the current folder and copy them to your hard drive.

Just like a phone, scanner and etc. a camera does NOT need to be assigned a drive letter.

[ChrisGreaves]

... windows autorun should ...

Sorry to sound so negative, but I've only just managed to get rid of AutoRun.

Which kept popping up uselessly whenever I plugged a memory key into a USB port, or a USB cable (camera, phone), asking me if I wanted to play music FCS¹ at all hours of the day and night.
Autorun has always, to me, seemed to smart for its own good.

And again, I didn't used to have to bother with Autorun with devices. I just plugged them in and they appeared as the next available drive letter.

¹rude and possible blasphemous phrase.
I think I'm having a grumpy day and should probably go back to bed with the seven books I've just picked up here at the library ...

[ChrisGreaves]

Have you tried "disk management" to assign the drive letter?

Thanks John. I'll give that a try (when I get home to where my camera & cable are ...)

[Rudi]

I doubt it will work. Please note my post here...
OK... I see you noted it....sorry!

[ChrisGreaves]

Modern Media Devices do not use the now older USB Mass Storage process ...

(sigh!) So now I've been unpgraded out of my comfort zone. Again. Happens about a million times a year, now.

I agree with Ken. I remove the memory card from the camera, ...

If I had a card-reader (I just looked again) I could do this, but that seems really stupid to me - all that extra wear and tear on the camera and computer, chance of getting raspberry jam on the card and so on.
A cable did what needed to be done - connect the source of images to the target of the images - and charge up the camera battery at the same time.

I'm going to invent a new word "retroprogress".

[ChrisGreaves]

I doubt it will work. Please note my post here...

Thanks again, Rudi.

I saved that web page to read after I've got myself home and made myself a cup of tea and had a bit of a lie-down and read one or two books - they are still made out of trees that have been killed, thank heavens.

(Bad Day: One of the books I planned to put on hold is an eBook and, apparently, can only be read at the library available internet connection, through a laptop, one idiotic page at a time; no scanning, no flipping through to get a sense of the book, no way to use a set of slips of coloured paper to mark some really interesting stuff in the book, ... don't get me started on how books nowadays don't have an AutoPlay option ...)

[ChrisGreaves]

...it is after a simple file management task, ...

Thanks Ken.
I think that when I wrote my program, the camera I had didn't have software.
(My program creates named folders for each set of photos (2014_07_23, 2014_07_25, 2014_07_27 etc according to the original dates of the photos.)

[stuck]

There is one piece of software that might be a relatively painless solution to this issue and that's Google's Picasa. There is one gotcha though...

Picasa has an import feature whereby when you plug in a device it will scan the card in it and then download them. In that sense it's just like every other image management software that comes with every device but at least it is NOT brand specific. It will work with whatever device you plug in.

I set it up on my XP system so that my wife could plug in her point and shoot via a USB cable and when Autorun kicked in it launched Picasa, which read the card, identified which ones were already off-loaded before copying the rest to a default root folder. The sub-folders it created were named by date, e.g. 2014-11-11. Simple and effective.

The gotcha is that if the card contained a video file the import failed. Probably because I didn't have Apple's Quick Time installed but if I'd been prepared to install that I think the problem would gave gone away. However, I got round the problem by reverting back to my fully manual put card in reader an use Explorer process and doing the transfer for my wife.

NB I don't do any photo-editing in Picasa. I simply use it as a catalogue and in that respect I find it brilliant for my needs.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

There is one piece of software that might be a relatively painless solution to this issue and that's Google's Picasa. There is one gotcha though...

Thanks Ken; (don't mention Google to me )

... meanwhile, back at the laptop ..., and one System Restore Point later - I installed the ArcSoft software that came with the camera. I saw nothing that suggested mapping the camera (card) to a drive letter, but I'll use Google(!) to search the web.

The ArcSoft software kit did install something related to stitching photos, so I guess that this newer camera doesn't have the stitching software on the camera itself. The old camera did so I could check that the stitched image looked OK before walking away from the chateau/moat/ocean liner¹.

My interim workaround is to (File Explorer) drag all the images to my laptop drive B: ("B" for Blotter which today is T:\Blotter\20141112\) and add drive B: to the potential harbours (harborers?) of images. My own package finds B:\ and distributes images to the dated folders according to the dates of the images.

(Now I remember: there is a package on the ArcSoft ware that grabs images, but it drops them all holus-bolus into a single dated folder rather than into dated folders for each image date)

¹ I know, I know - if I'd walked further away BEFORE shooting photos I wouldn't need to stitch ...

[stuck]

...drag all the images ... and distributes images to the dated folders...

Just how may dates are you dealing with in one go? If the image files are spread across dozens of days then I can see that an automated solution would be attractive but it's only one or two dates at a time I can't help feeling that you're making this task much harder that it would be if you simply did it manually in Explorer.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

Just how may dates are you dealing with in one go?

Hi Ken; to answer the question, an extreme case would be uploading a thousand images after my Paris trip. Extreme.
A typical multi-day load would be 300 photos spread across a six-day trip in the USA or after a long weekend.
Most commonly it would be two days worth.

I take your point.

However, I take photos with my camera if I want to do a photo-essay during the day, and with my elcheapo cell-phone if I'm just wandering around and spot something whimsical, so at the end of the day I may have two devices to upload; sometimes a friend's camera if she maintains that she thinks that keeping a copy (of her new granddaughter's first day on the planet) is a waste of time.

On top of those arguments (grin!) is the business of automating something to reduce errors - by writing the program I am assured that (a) the folder (date name) is formatted consistently and accurately. This is a strong point when I get into automating tasks for my web compiler, tasks such as locating and sorting images to be inserted automatically into a web page.

On top of those arguments (grin!) is the fact that I fell in love with computers when I realised that never again would I have to do boring and repetitive stuff. Having nine years of 300+ folders per year created automatically and without error has saved me more time than the simple programming task.

No wait! There's More!!
I also got to learn (back in 2005) about some more VBA, which happens just about every time I write a program (in VBA)

Hope that helps ...

[stuck]

OK, you've convinced me.

You don't say what ArcSoft application you installed but I'll guess it's a cut down version of their PhotoStudio, which is a full image editor as well as a photo organiser. I'd expect it to be able to auto-import stuff into date specific folders from what ever device is plugged in, regardless of whether or not the device is given a drive letter.

One other idea is to investigate Windows Photo Gallery. Apparently it too has an import feature.

Ken

[ChrisGreaves]

OK, you've convinced me.

Darn! There goes a full weeks worth of argument

...able to auto-import stuff into date specific folders ...

It does, but my limited experimentation with it shows that it dumps all the photos from the camera into a single folder named with today's date.
Now while my proggy can make sense out of that, it is faster/easier for me just to drag the D3600 folder onto my hard drive and let my proggy spread out the files from there; no need to load ArcSoft.

[stuck]

...my limited experimentation with it shows that it dumps all the photos from the camera into a single folder named with today's date...

I'm very surprised by that. I'd expect that to be an essential /basic feature of any photo application that has an 'import' feature. If it didn't have that option then I'd be reaching for Revo Uninstaller double quick.

Ken