Reading mode: Light Dark

PTP: Here it comes!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ulysses
  • Start date Start date
Go to last post
U

Ulysses

Guest
In the past, many have asked about what the PTP option in their menus was for. Well, it's all starting to become more clearly defined now with the latest news.



PTP is a standard that was announced back in August 2000 by the Photographic Imaging Manufacturers Association (PIMA) so that you would not have to install separate software or drivers in order to use your digicam with a PC or a printer. Your camera would simply be PTP-aware, you plug it in regardless of the physical connection (USB or Firewire or whatever), and the PTP-aware operating system or device recognizes it and talks to the camera seamlessly. Not a bad idea, huh?

Interestingly, the PTP protocol also seems to allow for a degree of control of your camera so that you might even be able to activate it in new ways not before possible, again, without the need for separate drivers.

Well the WinXP is going to be a PTP-aware OS. Your Cyber-shots are already PTP enabled. And support seems to be growing for it.

See the PIMA press release about PTP:
http://www.pima.net/News/ptp.htm

See the WinXP press release:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0107/01073101microsoftxpdigishow.asp

It's a great time to be digital !!--

Ulysses
http://www.pioneeris.net/ashton/F505V/megalist.htm
F505V Gallery Mega-List
 
Always wondered what the option was for, and now, thanks to you, I know.

One of my buddies mentioned being able to just plug in his Olympus camera to both his computer and his parents computer without installing any drivers. I wonder if that was due to this feature.

If there is really potential to control the camera through the USB port, this would open up a whole range of possibilities.

Now, if only my S70 was firmware upgradable to support it. :)
Ulysses said:
Am I alone in thinking that this has important potential? :)
Click to expand...
 
While I do believe there are levels of compatibility, I'm hoping Sony is supporting the features fully but leaving it up to third party programs to take advantage of the new features.
BrianF said:
brianf said:
Ulysses said:
Am I alone in thinking that this has important potential? :)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
You're not alone!

But I think if some kind of camera control was possible in the
existing S75 software Sony would have supplied the drivers for it
already.
Click to expand...
 
Yay!! This is really cool :)

I just picked up my DSC-S75 about an hour ago (it's my first digital camera, and first decent camera for that matter). Reading through the manual I read that about PTP but it really didn't explain what it was, but it sounded like it must be better than "normal".

Anyways, I'm running WinXP RC2 right now, so I'll get to try this out today! This is great, WinXP and my DSC-S75 just work!
Member said:
Well the WinXP is going to be a PTP-aware OS. Your Cyber-shots are
already PTP enabled. And support seems to be growing for it.

See the PIMA press release about PTP:
http://www.pima.net/News/ptp.htm

See the WinXP press release:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0107/01073101microsoftxpdigishow.asp
Click to expand...
 
TurboTed said:
Always wondered what the option was for, and now, thanks to you, I
know.

One of my buddies mentioned being able to just plug in his Olympus
camera to both his computer and his parents computer without
installing any drivers. I wonder if that was due to this feature.

If there is really potential to control the camera through the USB
port, this would open up a whole range of possibilities.

Now, if only my S70 was firmware upgradable to support it. :)
Click to expand...
I believe the current Oly implementation is similar, but it may not have all the functionality of PTP when it is completely available in the OS.

I think it's going to be big.
 
BrianF said:
You're not alone!

But I think if some kind of camera control was possible in the
existing S75 software Sony would have supplied the drivers for it
already.
Click to expand...
I think it will be possible if the S75/S85/CD300 et al implement PTP fully.

But I also believe from the articles that we may also need the OS to support it, as WinXP will do.
 
Jason Farnsworth said:
Anyways, I'm running WinXP RC2 right now, so I'll get to try this
out today! This is great, WinXP and my DSC-S75 just work!
Click to expand...
Yes, please test this out. If you get any clues, let us know.

I wonder if you'll need to uninstall your Sony drivers. Hmm... don't do that on my account, as it can get a bit sticky to reinstall them. :(
 
I'm using PTP with my S75 and MacOS X which supports the standard fully. It's very cool. Just plug it in and the operating system recognizes it. It's seemless and allows you to choose which pics to download, whether you want to crop them to various print pictures sizes automatically (such as 4X6), etc. I'm sure there will be many additional options as the OS matures.

Nice!

Pete
 
Alright.. I just tried it and IT WORKS!

It's great. I just took the first 5 pictures (yeah.. time for a 128MB memory stick), plugged the USB cable into my laptop running WinXP, and 15 seconds later I was looking at a slideshow of my kitchen :)

The images are amazingly clear. I love this camera! (...and WinXP for making is so easy to get my pictures).

Now on to figuring out how to use the rest of the camera!
Ulysses said:
Yes, please test this out. If you get any clues, let us know.

I wonder if you'll need to uninstall your Sony drivers. Hmm...
don't do that on my account, as it can get a bit sticky to
reinstall them. :(
Click to expand...
 
Is the transfer rate faster jason?
Jason Farnsworth said:
It's great. I just took the first 5 pictures (yeah.. time for a
128MB memory stick), plugged the USB cable into my laptop running
WinXP, and 15 seconds later I was looking at a slideshow of my
kitchen :)

The images are amazingly clear. I love this camera! (...and WinXP
for making is so easy to get my pictures).

Now on to figuring out how to use the rest of the camera!
Ulysses said:
Yes, please test this out. If you get any clues, let us know.

I wonder if you'll need to uninstall your Sony drivers. Hmm...
don't do that on my account, as it can get a bit sticky to
reinstall them. :(
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Jason Farnsworth said:
All I have to say to that is "what transfer rate?".

The camera connected practically instantly.
From the folder view the pictures opened the instant I clicked them.
It took about 2 seconds per picture to transfer to my computer.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that the transfer is still at the same USB speeds. It is about three seconds per picture on my Sony Optical Mouse with USB reader.

My question is: Did you already install drivers for the Sony camera? Or was your system free of drivers? You had to install nothing, and the OS simply recognized the camera and what it needed to do?

How were you viewing the slideshow? Can you provide more detail?
 
I just tried my S75 on PTP mode on Windows XP RC2 without having previously installed the drivers, and it detected the camera just fine. It is a lot better I think than the normal mode. For example, instead of mapping a drive letter to the camera as it does on normal mode, it shows the device as "Sony Digital Still Camera". You can then view the camera properties, where you can see how many pictures you have taken, and it also seems to try to detect how many are left but for some reason it shows "-1 remaining". From the camera icon you can do some "camera tasks" such as getting pictures from the camera via the camera wizard, and also delete all pictures from the camera. Although these are small differences from normal mode, it appears that the OS interacts more directly with the camera, so potentially we could see more cool stuff in the future. As far as transfer speed, it should make no difference in either normal or PTP mode since it's still USB.

I'm including these screen capture images so you can take a look at how it looks in XP.









Javier
Ulysses said:
Jason Farnsworth said:
All I have to say to that is "what transfer rate?".

The camera connected practically instantly.
From the folder view the pictures opened the instant I clicked them.
It took about 2 seconds per picture to transfer to my computer.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that the transfer is still at the same USB speeds. It
is about three seconds per picture on my Sony Optical Mouse with
USB reader.

My question is: Did you already install drivers for the Sony
camera? Or was your system free of drivers? You had to install
nothing, and the OS simply recognized the camera and what it needed
to do?

How were you viewing the slideshow? Can you provide more detail?
Click to expand...
 
My system was 100% free of drivers. It's a brand new install of WinXP RC2 on my Dell Inspiron laptop. Today was my first day with the camera and I just plugged it into the laptop with nothing installed. It just synced up and brought me to a wizard type thing to download the pictures to my system.

As for the slideshow: WinXP can show any folder full of pictures as a slide show. Whenever you click on an image, there is a link on the sidebar that says "View as slide show"

Although I don't have much to compare my transfer rates to, I'm very satisfied. I remember serial connection cameras that took minutes to copy pictures and where a pain in the rear.
Ulysses said:
Jason Farnsworth said:
All I have to say to that is "what transfer rate?".

The camera connected practically instantly.
From the folder view the pictures opened the instant I clicked them.
It took about 2 seconds per picture to transfer to my computer.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that the transfer is still at the same USB speeds. It
is about three seconds per picture on my Sony Optical Mouse with
USB reader.

My question is: Did you already install drivers for the Sony
camera? Or was your system free of drivers? You had to install
nothing, and the OS simply recognized the camera and what it needed
to do?

How were you viewing the slideshow? Can you provide more detail?
Click to expand...
 
Javier:

Did you try the feature to "delete all" of the pictures? It didn't seem to work for me.

I actually work at MS. On Monday I'm going to try to find out what's up with the deleting and -1 things.
Javier said:
I'm including these screen capture images so you can take a look at
how it looks in XP.









Javier
Ulysses said:
Jason Farnsworth said:
All I have to say to that is "what transfer rate?".

The camera connected practically instantly.
From the folder view the pictures opened the instant I clicked them.
It took about 2 seconds per picture to transfer to my computer.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that the transfer is still at the same USB speeds. It
is about three seconds per picture on my Sony Optical Mouse with
USB reader.

My question is: Did you already install drivers for the Sony
camera? Or was your system free of drivers? You had to install
nothing, and the OS simply recognized the camera and what it needed
to do?

How were you viewing the slideshow? Can you provide more detail?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Jason Farnsworth said:
My system was 100% free of drivers. It's a brand new install of
WinXP RC2 on my Dell Inspiron laptop. Today was my first day with
the camera and I just plugged it into the laptop with nothing
installed. It just synced up and brought me to a wizard type thing
to download the pictures to my system.

As for the slideshow: WinXP can show any folder full of pictures
as a slide show. Whenever you click on an image, there is a link
on the sidebar that says "View as slide show"

Although I don't have much to compare my transfer rates to, I'm
very satisfied. I remember serial connection cameras that took
minutes to copy pictures and where a pain in the rear.
Click to expand...
Not sure if this is related, but my pics come up in a box on computer immedietly the USB cable is connected and camera switched on. If I delete a picture on screen it is also deleted it from the camera memorycard, so it occurs to me there might be other interactive functions between the PC and the digicam, or perhaps this is nothing abnormal?
LarryG
Jason Farnsworth said:
Ulysses said:
Jason Farnsworth said:
All I have to say to that is "what transfer rate?".

The camera connected practically instantly.
From the folder view the pictures opened the instant I clicked them.
It took about 2 seconds per picture to transfer to my computer.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing that the transfer is still at the same USB speeds. It
is about three seconds per picture on my Sony Optical Mouse with
USB reader.

My question is: Did you already install drivers for the Sony
camera? Or was your system free of drivers? You had to install
nothing, and the OS simply recognized the camera and what it needed
to do?

How were you viewing the slideshow? Can you provide more detail?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Jason Farnsworth said:
I actually work at MS. On Monday I'm going to try to find out
what's up with the deleting and -1 things.
Click to expand...
Beautiful!!

Could you also check to see if those are problems with the windows showing the camera properties? Should it be reporting things such as battery levels, image sizes, and other info that is "not available" as shown in Javier's screen captures?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top