Download site for Pentax Digital Camera Utility?

[TheNewhouse]

Rats. I packed away the box for my K100D, figuring that I could
download the Pentax Digital Camera Utility software and load it on
my laptop... but it looks like the base SW is not available on
pentaximaging.com, and the update requires the CD to be in my
CD drive.

Does anyone know of a pointer to the installable software, or an
iso image of it that I can download? Otherwise, it's back to storage
to dig through some boxes...

Thanks, all!

--
Liberty breeds Responsibility

 

[UtahManSir]

This will give you the update:

http://www.pentaximaging.com/support/self-support/

but if you don't have it installed at all, you will probably need to dig out your CD's. AFAIK

Lloyd
--
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. -Mark Twain

http://lloydshell.blogspot.com/

 

[TheNewhouse]

This will give you the update:

Yup, I have the update, which I found requires the CD
(or, I guess, a previous version installed)... thus my request
for an exe or iso of the original.

--
Liberty breeds Responsibility

 

[Russ Houston]

Somebody posted a workaround whereby you label a CD a specific way and use that as the "program disc" and then the update will install. I can't say specifically what the label has to be, but I remember someone posting it here (or the other Pentax forum).

Hopefully a search will turn it up.
--
Russ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfortson/
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/russfortson
Even bad photography can be fun

 

[TheNewhouse]

Somebody posted a workaround whereby you label a CD a specific way
and use that as the "program disc" and then the update will install.
I can't say specifically what the label has to be, but I remember
someone posting it here (or the other Pentax forum).

Hopefully a search will turn it up.

What a cool trick, if it works! I'll do some searching
and see if I can't find the post you refer to... thanks!

--
Liberty breeds Responsibility

 

[TheNewhouse]

Rats. I packed away the box for my K100D, figuring that I could
download the Pentax Digital Camera Utility software and load it on
my laptop... but it looks like the base SW is not available on
pentaximaging.com, and the update requires the CD to be in my
CD drive.

Does anyone know of a pointer to the installable software, or an
iso image of it that I can download? Otherwise, it's back to storage
to dig through some boxes...

Found a great little secret while snooping for the CD trick mentioned
below -- turns out that if you run the 3.61 update with the s flag,
it installs without asking for the CD. I suspect that s is for "silent" --
because there are no dialogs displayed or questions asked, the
program just installs, silently. (I didn't even know that anything
had happened until I went to my programs list and saw a Pentax
menu there)

Thanks again to those who offered suggestions.

--
Liberty breeds Responsibility

 

[Castaway]

I didn't realize that people on this forum actually used the Pentax utility. I have it on the computer but have never used it. Am I missing something. Seems to me there are better ways of storing and processing you photographs.

I personnally use PS Elements 6 but there are many others from some excellant freebies to Photoshop costing hundreds of dollars.

--
Old Sea Dog
Galleries at http://www.pbase.com/oldseadog/galleries

 

[Russell Evans]

I didn't realize that people on this forum actually used the Pentax
utility.

I think because the Pentax software has an interface that people are not used to, that it gets a lot of bad press. It is however, perfectly capable software.

Thank you
Russell

 

[Russ Houston]

I found it gives the best raw conversion for my tastes, and once I learned the interface, I preferred it to Photoshop Elements (though PSE is more capable for local editing).

However, I've recently switched to Lightroom since it handles batch operations much easier.

I still use the Pentax software on my laptop.
--
Russ
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rfortson/
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/russfortson
Even bad photography can be fun

 

[paulkienitz]

(tag!)

I have a question... has anyone tried using a K7's version of PDCU with an old K10D? I'd like to make the attempt, if I can get a copy...

--

K10D, Sig 17-70, DA 55-300, FA 50/1.4 "Billy Bass", M 400/5.6 "the Great Truncheon"

 

[sankos]

Me too, I'd like to know whether Pentax is planning to make the new version of their software available to users of previous models. The screenshots of the new version suggest it might be a bit less clunky than the previous one (which crashed on me several times, though I tried to like it).

For some reason I can't get the pentaximaging site let me download anything -- I tried both with Firefox and IE, no good. Maybe it's blocking me 'cause I'm from Europe?
--
Marcin
http://flickr.com/photos/sankos/

 

[Glenanail]

Thanks people. I downloaded the update from the Hoya/Pentax site and installed the software using the s flag. Worked a treat. thenewhouse is a genius.

 

[KitTP]

(tag!)

I have a question... has anyone tried using a K7's version of PDCU with an old K10D? I'd like to make the attempt, if I can get a copy...

--

K10D, Sig 17-70, DA 55-300, FA 50/1.4 "Billy Bass", M 400/5.6 "the Great Truncheon"

Yes, its backward compatible, so it will work with RAW files from older models, but a number of the sofware functions specific for the K7 and K-X will not work.

There is an update on the Pentax website.

http://www.pentax.jp/english/support/digital/util4_win.html

 

[Tord S Eriksson]

One free editing software that I used to use a lot - sometimes in preference to PS - is GIMP. Totally open source, and excellent as it runs on any platform you care to mention. Doesn't do everything, but for basic editing (exposure, levels, crop, et cetera) it works great!

Let's hope there will be an updated version that can integrate with Topaz DeJPEG and Topaz DeNoise. Even handles RAW as it is, but not perfectly, as yet!
--
tord (at) mindless (dot) com

 

[marineboy]

can anyone tell me what the s flag is
thanks
john

 

[GordonBGood]

can anyone tell me what the s flag is
thanks

John, it likely means that you run the installation program using the Command Prompt (DOS-like) window - likely in Administrator mode) and the '/s' flag likely means a "silent" mode which suppresses some messages, perhaps including the one about inserting an existing copy of the software.

If the above doesn't mean anything to you, maybe you shouldn't attempt it and should use the other method to install the software.

Regards, GordonBGood

 

[Pete Dee]

can anyone tell me what the s flag is
thanks

John, it likely means that you run the installation program using the Command Prompt (DOS-like) window - likely in Administrator mode) and the '/s' flag likely means a "silent" mode which suppresses some messages, perhaps including the one about inserting an existing copy of the software.

If the above doesn't mean anything to you, maybe you shouldn't attempt it and should use the other method to install the software.

You can do the install from a thumb drive by just naming the drive "SS-90", the install program thinks it is installing from a CD.

Pete

 

[GordonBGood]

can anyone tell me what the s flag is
thanks

John, it likely means that you run the installation program using the Command Prompt (DOS-like) window - likely in Administrator mode) and the '/s' flag likely means a "silent" mode which suppresses some messages, perhaps including the one about inserting an existing copy of the software.

If the above doesn't mean anything to you, maybe you shouldn't attempt it and should use the other method to install the software.

You can do the install from a thumb drive by just naming the drive "SS-90", the install program thinks it is installing from a CD.

Pete, that was the "other method" to which I was referring, and in fact one can just name any drive on your machine to that name, including temporarily changing the name on one of your hard drive partitions, a flash memory USB "thumb drive", a virtual hard disk based on an ISO or other file, etcetera. BTW, the correct name is "S-SW90" not as you have typed. There was a forum thread that gives this information down the thread by Russell Evens at: http://bit.ly/b56Cbp .

To complete this, I just tried installing using the S switch from a command prompt for version 4.32 and it still appears to require finding the above drive name to update so no longer works if it once did.

Regards, GordonBGood

 

[bricko]

Where, how do you type in this s

 

[GordonBGood]

Where, how do you type in this s

As I said above, the '/S' option doesn't work. However, if you really must try it, follow the following instructions:

1) Open a Command Prompt (DOS type) window with "Run As Administrator...".

2) Say you've saved the downloaded update for version 4.32 as PBLU0342.exe in D:\My Documents\downloads\software, then type d: and the Enter key to get to the "D:" drive and then cd "My Documents\downloads\software" and the Enter key to get to the directory. Your actual use of the cd = change directory command will vary depending where you put the file.

3) Type "PBLU0432 /S" without the quotes followed by the Enter key. To get a help window showing all the command line options, you can type "PBLU0432 /?" without the quotes followed by the Enter key and see that the '/S' option is listed as a silent mode.

4) The program will run as without the option except it will avoid some of the preliminary window popups, but will still fail to install when it can't find a drive named as said in the above post.

In summary, it appear that this method worked for version 3 of the program but not for version 4.

Regards, GordonBGood