[Example images: swindon. cambridge. scotland and southampton. girton and cambridge 9801 (includes some outdoor flash). cambridge 9802 (includes some indoor flash). closeup pictures of psion 3a interior ]
Answer: Yes, a free utility called Pump converts Sony PMP files to standard JPEG format. Pump can batch-process entire folder trees full of PMPs, converts them with no loss of quality, and extracts all usable metadata attributes (shutter speed, lens orientation, flash, etc.), storing them in the output filename for easy reference.
Old Answer: there is now a new release of the software from Sony, which can download all images straight from camera to jpg files. See Sony software updates . This upgraded software will with a single click on the third icon from the left download all the images, retaining the correct numbering of the images, but losing the orientation information - so that pictures taken with the lens facing backwards look upside down.
An old workaround is available as follows: http://www.hamrick.com/
From: huber27@ibm.net (Mark Huber) Subject: Re: SONY DSC-F1 FAQ? To: (David MacKay) Download a program called VuePrint 5.1c. Not only is it an excellent viewer, but it will convert Sony's .pmp files directly to a number of other formats including .jpg. With this program you will be able to convert entire pic cam directories all at one time. No more one by one. Download at http://www.hamrick.com/ If you have any questions about using the program with the Sony, drop me a note. One point that will save you aggrevation, when you open a pic cam directory in VuePrint, you have to select "all files" in the file type box. That is the only way you can view .pmp files. By default, it is set to view "image files".This works! it costs $40, and I recommend it if you can't get the sony software upgrade mentioned above. You have to be careful when using it that it is doing what you want it to, but you can easily get it to make thumbnails of all images or convert all images to gif or whatever. Summary of procedure. Example images. Example 2.
The only disadvantage of viewing the sony albums this way is that vueprint does not know how to use the index files to put the images in order. So the order of the images tends to be jumbled. Similarly, pictures which are upside down (because of the swivel-head) remain upside-down.
From: Jim Soriano jsoriano@sumbeach.com >Dear Jim, > saw your post on the dsc-f1 and I wondered if you >had any further information about alternatives to the >clunky software? No alternatives identified. Sony apparently uses a proprietary format for saving the images. I'm hoping for Sony to issue an update to their software someday soon...it's currently release 1.0.soulhuntre@earthling.net writes:
a company called ixla as a piece of software they call digital camera suite that the so far seems to a decent job of managing image catalogs from digital cameras it supports the Sony cameras via the Twain interface. While he would be nice if it can do it directly it seems to be worth the extra effort. More information can be found at http://www.isrgroup.com. ALSO) a company call a company called Fotonation markets piece of software that claims to add your digital cameras memory directly to the Windows 95 desktop. I haven't tried it yet with the Sony but a free download of the software is available at http://www.fotonation.com/. Okay I just tried it in the software doesn't support the Sony DSC-F1 At this time perhaps if enough of us write a letter they will fix that.
I (mackay@mrao) tried the monocular from Walmart. I find I have to keep a hand on the monocular to stop it falling off, or else tape it on with sticky tape which is awkward. I haven't yet found a reliable technique for getting the whole picture in focus. My impression is that when the centre is focussed, perhaps the periphery is not; but it's hard to be scientific about this. Still, for only 16 bucks, it's good fun.
this Sony site carries accessories for the DSC-F1. They have a Telephoto (1.5x) and Wide-Angle (/1.5) Lens Set ($100.00). Does anyone have experience with these lenses? 1.5x magnification doesn't sound very much to me. Sun shades DSAC-MF1 are $25.00,
http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/catalog/index2.html (Hamodi).
Start SonyDSC. Click on the top left camera icon. When the album image appears, click on it once to select (yellow) it. Pull down the File menu and select Copy to Disc Album, and click ok.... the camera icon blinks for about a minute only (instead of half an hour) and no images are transferred and there is no error message. I have not figured out why this happened. Could it be because I had deleted some files in the windoze pic_cam directory? I created a fresh pic_cam directory and the next transfer was successful.
More From: William Muirhead
SONY UK were able to explain the reason for my problem:
The maximum number of albums per Master Directory is 16 albums. Opening
more than 16, corrupts the indexing file and the albums are no longer
accessible. That is very useful isn't it! Ed.
They also mentioned, maximum 200 images can be copied to one album.
I use a DSC-F1 with a Macintosh and here's an interesting fact: The ability to download edited (or any other) images back to the camera is missing from the Macintosh version of the DSC-F1 Album Utility. I contacted Sony and (eventually) got this reply: > I have made some enquiries regarding the option to upload images back > to the camera. Unfortunately I have been advised that currently there > is no release date for any such add on for the Macintosh. > > I am sorry I am unable to give you better news, however,I will keep > your information on file and if I hear of any updates which will > enhance the Macintosh software I will let you know. > Trudi.Bilke@ccmail.eu.sony.co.jp If any other Mac users are equally pissed off about this missing feature, then please e-mailThanks to Jools, you can download v1.5.0U of the Mac Album Utility which does allow downloading of images back to the camera. from http://www.source.co.uk/users/nrg/dsc-f1/.with your name & address and any comments and I will keep forwarding the messages to as many relevant people within Sony as I can. Hopefully, as the PC software is being updated they will update the Mac version too. While searching the internet for an updated Mac version of the DSC-F1 Album Utility I did find a version 1.5 for the PC on Sony USA's web-site and a version 2.02 on Sony Japan's site. The Mac version I have is v1.0.0E R6. If anyone has any later version - Japanese, American or European - please let jools@nrg.source.co.uk know. Subject: Macintosh Album Utility From: Jools jools@nrg.source.co.uk Good news for Macintosh owning DSC-F1 users. You may remember that I commented on the Macintosh version of the DSC-F1 Camera Utility's inability to download edited images back to the camera. Trudi Bilke - the UK technical support person replied saying that there was currently no release date for a software update to allow this. I've just received an e-mail from the very same person with v1.5.0U of the Album Utility attached - AND it DOES allow downloading of images back to the camera!! Proof indeed that e-mailing the right people can get results! I assume that the update will be on "www.sony-cp.com" eventually or on the US updates site, but it's not on there yet.
The following unix commands are right I think:
usage: nine2one source_file animated e.g. nine2one source.gif animated reads source.gif and writes animated.gif and animatedud.gif ------- put this in a file called nine2one --------- #!/bin/csh convert -crop 160x120+48+36 $1 $1.1.gif convert -crop 160x120+240+36 $1 $1.2.gif convert -crop 160x120+432+36 $1 $1.3.gif convert -crop 160x120+48+180 $1 $1.4.gif convert -crop 160x120+240+180 $1 $1.5.gif convert -crop 160x120+432+180 $1 $1.6.gif convert -crop 160x120+48+324 $1 $1.7.gif convert -crop 160x120+240+324 $1 $1.8.gif convert -crop 160x120+432+324 $1 $1.9.gif convert -delay 10 -loop 0 \ $1.1.gif \ $1.2.gif \ $1.3.gif \ $1.4.gif \ $1.5.gif \ $1.6.gif \ $1.7.gif \ $1.8.gif \ $1.9.gif \ $2.gif convert -delay 10 -loop 0 \ $1.1.gif \ $1.2.gif \ $1.3.gif \ $1.4.gif \ $1.5.gif \ $1.6.gif \ $1.7.gif \ $1.8.gif \ $1.9.gif \ $1.8.gif \ $1.7.gif \ $1.6.gif \ $1.5.gif \ $1.4.gif \ $1.3.gif \ $1.2.gif \ $1.1.gif \ $2ud.gif
The low light capabilities are greatly enhanced by setting the "M" position on the on off button, and adjusting shutter speed to 1/7.5. When shooting low light pics in Auto and the use flash icon appears, move on off button to "M", and shoot. I was able to take clear pics in a darkened room with the 1/7.5 shutter speed at "M" that would normally be taken by many camera using a flash.
The DSC-F1 has a flash, but the occasions to use it are rare.
-- Anthony Romao
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jools@nrg.source.co.uk said: There is no reason why you can't use the DSC-F1 as the source video input for video conferencing. As long as the camera input on your computer accepts a PAL (or NTSC) image just plug the VIDEO OUT wire into it. It's no different to using any other video camera. As long as your software and video input supports it. Certainly on the Macintosh this is no problem whatsoever. You can also use it as a video source for digitizing video for CD-ROM or Web playback. The resolution is definately high enough, its just the frame rate thats a little slow, but for 15fps CD-ROM playback it's perfectly adequate.
send your reply to me and hense@col.bsf.alcatel.fr
a generic unix (requires a reasonably sane serial port, X11, and libjpeg) utility that supports this camera can be found at http://www.ishiboo.com/~nirva/Projects/stillgrab/
Example usage, if the camera is plugged in COM1: (as root) cli -T /dev/ttyS0 OR cli -T /dev/ttyd0It will save files in the current directory called grab0.jpg, grab1.jpg, etc.. If you specify -f tmp, it will name the files tmp0.jpg, tmp1.jpg, etc..
You may find that you have to be root in order to run cli and access the /dev/tty; what is the fix for this?
Once when I used version 1.0 of this software I had this message
[root@mull stillgrab]# cli -T /dev/ttyS0 retrieving pictures 1 - 89 out of total 89 picture 1, 58005 bytes - 100% done <--- (takes about 30 seconds) tty not respond. time up. tty not respond. time up. tty not respond. time up. tty not respond. time up. readtty: Success Caught signal 1 Quitting... Another time I also got the error F1fopen fail F1fopen() failure F1finfo() failureI don't know what caused this intermittent problem. Later versions are said to be better.
Restarting is easy with a command like
cli -T /dev/ttyS0 -s 24
I made version 2.0 using the commands
./configure make cli cli -h su chmod g+x cli chown root.other cli chmod a-w cli chmod u+s cli exit cli -I -T /dev/ttyS0 -S hWith version 2 I still often get messages like
Camera not responding tty not responding.Switching to low speed (-S l) and switching down speed on the camera appears to help with this.
Ken recommends solving read/write permission problems by making sure that the files are written in a dir. where the group s and w bit is set.
Latest advice for linux people (from dugsong)
this patch seems to clear up a lot of the problems i've encountered with stillgrab bailing: ftp://ftp.monkey.org/pub/users/dugsong/stillgrab2.patch also, i've been using a japanese program similar to stillgrab. it seems to be somewhat more reliable. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/%7Exg2k-hys/dscf1/chotplay-0.06.tar.gz
Could you please, if you know about that problem, give me more info or your impressions on it.
Anyone know? Answers to me and Monty please.
I don't know. Please reply to Christian Oliff P29520@exchange.sihe.ac.uk
I think you can get about 20 pictures on the Mavica's floppy; obviously you can take a little wallet full of floppies and take hundreds of pictures. In contrast, the DSCF1 has a capacity of 108 pictures tops. If you take high quality pictures, then you can only fit about 40 or 80 depending on the quality you choose. Actually, I usually can't see much difference between the different qualities. Once you have taken those 108 pictures, you can't take any more, unless you pick some to delete.
Yes, the DSCF1 has a flash. There is a tendency for pictures with flash to be overexposed or underexposed; this is probably a problem with all digital cameras since the dynamic range isn't as big as film.
One problem and its solution: ----------------------------- I had a DSCF1 for about 14 months, and I lent it to my sister who uses Windows 98. She has found that the software isn't working, and we are wondering if this is a Win98 problem or something else: (1) the camera is connected by cable to Com-1; (2) SonyDSC version 1.0 is running, we click on the camera icon to download the album, and get a windoze error message: A Fatal exception 0E has occured at 0028:C1828128 The current application will be terminated. Solution: switch off windoze 98, and switch on again - then the software works OK! plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!
I upgraded my UK software fine using an upgrade from the sony web site given above.
As much as I would like to assist you personally, I feel your inquiry would be more effectively answered if directed to the Computer Peripheral Products Group in your country. Unfortunately our U.S. Division does not provide email support.So why do they have an email enquiry feature on their web pages? Stupid twits.
UK help is here: Sony Computer Peripherals UK
Technical Enquiry line Mo - Fr, 09:00 - 17:00 h Tel : 01932 / 816699 Fax : 01932 / 817001