Raspberry Pi Tutorial 41: Control a DSLR with your Pi!

In this tutorial I will show you how to control a DSLR camera with your Raspberry Pi and gphoto2! I am using a Canon EOS Rebel t3i and a Raspberry Pi 2 B. This tutorial should work with other cameras; the complete compatible camera list can be found at:
www.gphoto.org/...

[@imdoug]

This has to be the highest quality tutorial I've ever seen on KZbin. Excellent explanations.

[@baonguyendoan4408]

before this kzbin.info/www/bejne/mX-4eWiaeMZ_g7c or after this one too?

[@PhotoartItPhotography]

the problem is that it gives an error in the line -- shot_date = datetime.now () .strftime ("%Y-%m-%d") shot_date = datetime.now () .strftime ("%Y-%m-%d %H: %M: %S") can anyone help

[@cameron.turner]

Agreed. I've never seen a tutorial this well detailed and explained. Well done!!

[@JesusSanchezAzain12]

OMG Thank You!!!! I've recently got into 3D printing and I've been wanting to do timelapses of my prints. I have a Nikon Coolpix L105 and I couldn't find a free program that can connect to that camera. I came across this video and saw you used a raspberry pi. On gphoto's website it didn't list my camera, but I tried it anyways. With no experience in python, only java, I was able to follow along and copied your code. Gladly, my camera was able to connect with gphoto and I was able to take pictures with no problem.

[@amartyasaiandra8197]

Most Detailed explanation I have ever seen thank you so much for this tutorial

[@galangal4803]

Alexander. Thank you very much for your RPi3 tutorials. It is good to have clear explanations without all the fancy-dan stuff such as background music and jazzy visuals.

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed this tutorial!

[@johnlathrop123]

Thanks! 7 years old and this still works.

[@Banaan1985]

Very nice tutorial. Works at once as well, often not the case in many tutorials. The only thing is once the script has run once it won't run again. It seems to hang on gp(downloadCommand). It stays forever between image captured and downloaded. After some trials and errors I worked around this by creating another function where it downloads the photos and clears the camera, after the photo (or photos) have been taken. That means I removed the gp(downloadCommand) and gp(clearCommand) from the captureImages() function and moved them to a new function. Cheers and thanks again

[@cotomaznaczyc]

Lightning! Another reason to want to trigger camera. I was not aware of gphoto2. Great tutorial!

Excellent tutorial, please you can share the code you write?

[@jings6412]

Thank you so much for your tutorial!! It helps a lot. However, there is a bug is the python script. I noticed that when you release trigger more than one time, the latter picture will cover the former picture. So that the folder will always have one.JPG file and one.CR2 file, which is the latest one. That's because when you call the renameFiles() function, the shot_time in this function is not refreshed. So it always is the time when you run the script. To solve this problem, you could add the shot_time to the while loop at the end of the script to obtain the latest time. And the same with shot_data.

[@jorisvanoers3605]

How did you solve this in the while loop? You give it a reload function? Thanks

[@ruudvoest1038]

I had the same issue. Adding the functions to the While loop did not solve the issue . Better to replace the shot_time argument with the alternative timestamp using time.strftime . (And put that in the while loop as well ) . So use the mentioned shot-date argument but remove the shot-time one , use time.strftime for that . Make sure you add import time at he start of your script :-)

[@shooreshsufiye2189]

easily explained a very useful and practical function. Thanks.

[@Chaminox]

WOW just wow thank you so much great voice and video style

[@lefablabdequoy8301]

thanks a lot , after weeks searching why my EOS M50 failed to trigger with mi RPI 3B+ due to USB mode of camera , since your video i learned to kill the gphoto process that block the triggering ....very helpfull tutorial. thnaks again;

[@jayvadgama5663]

Excellent video with clear explanations. Much Appreciated.

[@J0sh21_]

Danke sehr gutes video. Auch für Anfänger leicht verständlich

[@juanzaragoza6129]

Incredible tutorial. I am watching this because I am trying to DIY an upgrade on my old nikon d3100 trying to make of my raspberry pi the new brains of the camera so that I can try different autofocus algorithms. Do you think it could be done like this?

[@patrickmacclenihan4235]

Thanks for this really well detailed and explained tutorial ! It will really help me in my project ! Wish you the best from Ainay le Chateau !

[@GeorgeC1andonly]

NO typos! legend

[@joakimfardig2359]

Best tutorial i've seen so far 👍

[@paulgriffin8566]

Alexander many thanks for a fantastic tutorial.

[@avi-brown]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

[@questionablecommands9423]

Had no idea that `gphoto2` was a thing. Looks like ALL of my cameras have at least some support! Nice. Because of the number of hours I've lost debugging an app that had an "as" in the imports, I feel compelled to politely but firmly ask you to NOT use 'as' in your imports.

[@blogtodeath4736]

great video very concise. cant wait to try it

[@adamsipes5685]

Awesome video! Can't wait to try it out in the coming days! I tried following the link in the description, but it didn't work for me. Was hoping I could find a copy of the code there... but I can follow along and type.

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

Hey Adam. I'm glad you enjoyed the video. That's weird about the link; it works for me. The link lists the cameras supported by gphoto2 - you won't find my code there. I didn't think to upload the code anywhere.

[@adamsipes5685]

+Alexander Baran-Harper Sorry for the false alarm. The link works on a different internet connection. Not sure why it didn't work from the particular connection last night.

[@TheCollectorEdd]

I love pie!

[@jcurwen31]

Thank you, i now use my Nikon coolpix aw110 from my pi. I experiment with gphoto2 --capture-image-and-download command. And i didn't know the sh python library, very useful

[@stevenparker9295]

Very good tutorial ! Thanks !!

[@zeroning7195]

thank you! very good tutorial

[@samitchakraborty3854]

This is a great video. Explicitly explained. How can I draw or paste the same filename information (timestamp, frame number etc.) on the images captured by libgphoto2's trigger command?

[@laylow9000]

Awesome tutorial! Thanks!

[@mlfsup]

Wow!! I worked for days on my own trying to get the camera to respond. Your tutorial nailed it. BUT. Well, I am working on troubleshooting it, but when the picture is taken by the camera, my Pi CRASHES!!!! Yikes!!! I have been through the code a few times, and find nothing wrong, although I haven't worked with Python before, so there might be a [ or { or ( misplaced. Nonetheless, I will start looking for other tutorials you have done. A thousand thanks!!!!

[@adamsipes5685]

** Note: shot_date and shot_time variables need to be reset inside the while loop - otherwise the filename will remain the same, and each picture will overwrite the previous (leaving only one picture - the last picture taken).

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

Yes.

[@chad7615]

How do you do this?

[@RaptorFPV-ri7dd]

gopro session vs sj cam m10

Yeah, how do yo do this?

[@jhopiv]

How do we add this to the python script?

[@arwinarunswapna8047]

In the same way is there any way we could connect multiple canon cameras and capture pictures simultaneously

[@kelvinwe4502]

Excellent explanation! What modifications needed if I want to capture photos of 2 or more cameras simultaneously?

[@MrBrianJohnOBrien]

If you get an error accessing a USB device, while using gPhoto2 make sure that the automounting of a USB Device hasn't happened. You may have to unmount it. For me it pops up on occasion in the desktop window, I eject it and then I am able to use gPhoto2.

[@tarnis3d]

Thankyou for posting this, extremely useful tutorial! Is there a way to wake the camera back up once it goes to sleep?

[@lefablabdequoy8301]

excellent tutorial . i'm beginner with raspberry PI . this principle could be interesting for long pause astrophotography. i suppose that for your tutorial you're in automatic mode with the DSLR ( autofocus + automatic parameters for ISO, speed , etc ..) . does your script work so simply in every mode => trigger the DSLR in the choosen manual mode ( particularly in manual mode with long pause speed ) ?

[@ntt212]

Really good tutorial. Can you make tutorial on how to display live view feed from the camera by using gphoto?

[@theanantshukla]

Were you able to find a solution?

[@X25_Networking]

Anant Shukla Live View is not really good because the very big Stream have to Pass the slowly usb2 port, so you get a latency by 3seconds

[@Ifindcosplay]

Great video, i would like to try this but I am just curious if it is possible to modify the code so that it will pull photos you take off off the SD card while you are shooting them from the camera. I would like to create a portable backup to save photos onto a USB flash, as my current camera only has 1 SD card slot and I would like redundancy.

[@chad7615]

I think you would just set the capture target to the external flash drive rather than a folder on the desktop.

[@marcin8535]

amazing!!! it's art mate!!! respect!!

[@GU5MA]

amazing video

[@jirivchi]

Amazing tutorial!! I would like to control multiple cameras. I have tried with: gphoto2 (--camera: Nikon\ DSC\ 5300 --capture-image BUT WITH TERMINAL OF LINUX) and it works. the problem comes when I want to write in a script in python. I always get a error (-105: unknown model) in python. But I can see my cameras and the port where they are. I think the problem is how to writE the name of model in python. someone could you help me? I tried gp('--camera: Nikon\ DSC\ 5300 --capture-image'). THANKS IN ADVANCED

[@Marcos_Pasquin]

Hello Alexander, Excellent tutorial. I found that, in the python program , if I run it with the option to make timelapse ( while True: ) and sleep (5) , only save the firts picture, the other pictures just get lost. 1st: It deletes image from camera, then trigger camera ok , but in the folder I chose is only one picture after 3 minutes working. I can solve that with "cron" ,because I want to take pictures every 10 minutes, and forget about " while True " option on the .py But , Do you know the reason of that ? Can you help me with that ? Thank You again for this Tutorial

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

Are you writing over the name each time in Python? I do that by mistake in my tutorial.

[@Marcos_Pasquin]

Thank you for your quick answer, so, how can we all the viewers and I correct this? In wich part of the python is the mistake? Thank you ( I am very new on python script)

[@SRG-Learn-Filmmaking]

I'm wondering, most lenses have servo focus capabilities, althoug most times follow focus devices are external. Is it posible to control the focus from a external device as the pi (maybe paired with a control knob)? Anyhow, great video, thanks for sharing.

[@krisharris4158]

Hey- great tutorial thanks. I am trying to figure out how I'd send a one off command to set the ISO on the camera through python. It works fine for me in command line if I write "gphoto2 --set-config /main/imgsettings/iso=19" , but i can't figure out how to implement this exact same command through Python. any help would be amazing.

[@hedbergmicke]

This is just fantastic :)

[@lesterjopia5991]

Thank you so much, works perfectly! Btw anyone know if for instance I want to use python2 instead of python3, how can I install gphoto2 module for python 2?

[@sebastian-hopp]

Hey! Thanks for this awesome tutorial. Is there a way to set an amount of shots the camera should take? I mean to stop after several shots.

[@arijitghosh6378]

I would be able to all sorts of neat things with it if it works with my camera. Thanks!!! But does it have the potential to break my camera in any way?

[@klausjunk9062]

Hi Alexander, great tutorial. I have one question. Can you use the standard USB camera cable or is it needed to modify it ?

[@aquafilmkoeln]

Hi Alexander, thank you very much for this great tutorial. For some reason the photos I download don't show up in my folder. BUT I can open and view them with the built-in picture viewer. Any idea how I can make the images visable in the folders?

[@fitarikandronirina2]

thanks a lot 🎉 !

[@Sarchitta]

thank you very much

[@forever80213]

I do appreciate your sharing video.

[@lammauteddywong6986]

Good Tutorial, but which ports of camera you are using to connect with Raspberry Pi?

THANKS!! I wonder how did you learn all this?

[@danielgn6227]

If your camera is listed as supported and it's not showing up in gphoto2, make sure WiFi/NFC is disabled on your camera.

[@motosandphotos]

Thanks for this! This is my first Python/Pi project and the process was very easy to follow. Only problem I'm having is once the image is captured, I can't see the files in my /Desktop/gphoto/images folder until I reboot the machine. Any tips? Also, how can I enable image thumbnails in the file directory? Mine only show a default icon for JPG/TIFF/RAW etc. (running RaspPi OS)

[@OfficialNetDevil]

Will it work with a camcorder and control zoom functions?

[@baonguyendoan4408]

Yea like it is totally great video you made. How is this capable with dealing with Video Camera recording on dslr? Do you have a video tutorial on that too or do you have a link to any github repository for gphoto? Im in film class this semester and would like to write a script for video recording with hands tied behind my back. Kidding >o

[@WLockIV]

Sick tutorial!

[@michaelg7021]

Great, thanks! Could you also make a live view tutorial?

[@dimitrijunker4442]

Hi, it works fine, but I still have one Problem, I plan to use it to digitize slides, So I need to Control the projector, then take a picture, forward the projector,... That also works fine. But I don't think it will be a goog idea to have the mirror of the Nikon D850 move up and down for every of the maybe 30000 pictures. Is there a way to put the mirror up? Without the USB-Cable I can put the camera on live View, but as soon as I connect the Cable it goes back to view finder mode.

[@dimitrijunker4442]

If you want to keep the pictures on the camera on some you need to change the location where the camera stores them. for the D850 I needed a gphoto2 --set-config capturetarget=1 Now I still have to find out how to convert this to python

[@elijahlucian]

hey. did you ever figure out how to get a script to trigger after camera events? Rather than triggering the thing from the pi, have the pi listen to the camera for events then do a thing.

[@TheMarkaay]

How do I change settings like Iso, exposure and aperature with gphoto2? Could you do another tutorial, please.

[@dronezoom]

Hello, how to make live view with this setup? thank you very much

[@Tsmee69]

This is great, I appreciate your work. I do have a couple of questions though. I'm a relative stump when it comes to python. How would one go about creating a GUI for this? I have a Nikon D600. In working with HDR, I can only go 3 steps above, and below within the camera functions. I know my steps can be extended beyond that with code. Essentially what I'm asking is how can I get functionality of my required settings (basically any function I deem necessary) all wrapped up in a nifty GUI that will allow me to create time lapsed, or acquire images for HDR with the ability to change options from a GUI? I am just finishing a degree in software development, unfortunately python was not part of the program. Any advice, hints or other info you could give me would be great!

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

What you're describing is beyond my competency in Python. Sorry. The only GUIs I've played with are tkinter. Sentdex (youtube) has a pretty good series on how to use it.

[@simondoetsch900]

Really nice video. Thank you. With the script, I get my old Nikon D40 to shot one pic, it gets successfully renamed, but the second pic is not copied completely. There comes a temporary file called "tmpfile5FBtrd". After that, nothing happens. Can anybody give me an hint what the problem should be?

[@tjark8916]

Maybe you or someone else still need a solution, i just encountered the same problem with my D80 and found a solution: You have to delete the curve.ntc file before you run the program again. Just add os.remove("/home/pi/Desktop/gphoto/images/" + folder_name + "/curve.ntc") in the renameFiles function. Notice it has to have the same amount of spaces in front of it as the for-loop.

[@andygaras]

i really just want to update the camera folder that automatically comes when you plug the camera in, even when i refresh f5 it doesnt seem to bring up the new files until i unplug and reconnect the camera

[@debopriyobanerjee515]

How to change camera settings and control shooting in manual mode from raspberry pi?

[@party-boxphotobooth4683]

If i connect my camera by usb to computer OR to raspberri pi and raspberri pi to computer, which way faster to load photos to pc?

[@daz71]

Looks logical, I wonder if, seven years later, it's still useable? :O

[@ebr182]

Is it possible to use RPi as external recorder and record at 4k or 1080p60fps?

[@nemorotatory]

Great tutorial. Excellent comment. I try to use gphoto2 with Sony nex 7. I used the auto detect and got the device show as a "mass storage device" . When I tried the trigger command it gave me error. After researching, I think I would need to install libgphoto2. I have been trying to install it but haven't success. Can you help me in how to install libgphoto2?

[@sameenashaikh_29]

Hi, My camera does get auto detected but for trigger capture it says its an unsupported operation. Can you tell me what i can do to solve this problem??

[@abhinavramnath8415]

Try entering this into the terminal instead: 'ghpoto2 --capture-image' You can check if gphoto2 has access to image capture setting on your dslr here, gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php

[@namelittle1204]

Can this project control the focal length of DSLR camera?

[@bestworstugliest]

nice job man. conratulations. But why you use python? I think you can do it with shell script much more easy.

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

You absolutely can. I am gearing my tutorials more towards people who are new to programming. So far every Raspberry Pi Tutorial I've made has been in Python3, so I'm just keeping the language consistent. I figure by doing so the project seems less intimidating to new comers. In this tutorial the Python is just executing Bash commands.

[@edm3048]

I seriously appreciate this, I'm trying to learn more Python, and you've been tremendously helpful

[@GeorgeC1andonly]

I don't seem to get the process problem on my pi - I wonder if an update was made or something

[@arijitghosh6378]

I have another question, is there a way to shoot in continuous shutter mode with gphoto2?

[@anatoly_kabakov]

good job!

[@seba10chile]

save_location = "/home/pi/desktop/gphoto/images/" + folder_name nameError: name folder_name is not defined any solution?

[@zolti22]

Does it work on Nikon D500? I don't see it being supported on the gphoto website :(

[@garyhocker7876]

great tutorial!!! Is there any way to power up a canon dslr with the raspberry pi?

[@minosnikas9895]

Dslr's usually need voltage over 5V that usb port can provide, but look for Canon dummy battery power charger on eBay. You can find alternatives that can use 2 USB ports or wall power outlet.

[@unitycommunications4389]

this video was super helpful i got excited when his website had a contact page to maybe jump a little bit more in dept on it but was unable to contact him. i did figure it out though github.com/TX-Unity/unity is a series of scripts that allow you to tether wifi via usb and WiFi and choose the folder you want to store photos in. I hope this helps people who are looking to tether with Gphoto2.

[@ch4nd4n]

Why don't you use pkill to kill the process?

[@mytkoenko]

10:50 why not use 'killall gvfsd-gphoto' ?

[@pablomurillo7499]

I have a several problem, i changed the capturetarget ram to SD but when I put the list files there isn't any photo :(

[@hanifhawari]

Hi Alexander Baran-Harper, great tutorial. I've tried your method and working excellent so far. I'm new to this python3 programming. I have some modification on the dslr setting using the python3 platform. Ive tried the command gphoto2 --set-config /main/imgsettings/iso=0 on the terminal works fine, but when i tried to change the value of the camera setting on python, error comes out of the thonny shell. May i know where can i refer to change the settings of the camera on python3? and ive tried using the same method with your clearCommand approach, isoCommand = ["--set-config", "/main/imgsettings/iso", "=0"] with no avail, this comes with python error. Besides, i also tried below codes and come with same error. isoCommand = ["--set-config", "/main/imgsettings/iso=0"] Thanks and have a nice day : )

[@stanjohnsuab]

great tutorial 👍 thank you for sharing. is it possible to incorporate gps module to the raspberry pi to geotag the pictures?

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

Absolutely.

[@stanjohnsuab]

Alexander Baran-Harper great, I would love to learn how to do it from you. I wanted to use raspberry pi to trigger, timer to shut down, and to geotagging aerial photos.

[@jeevanprasad2049]

Can it also be used for image processing

[@JacksonShanks-d7q]

this is a brilliant tutorial. i cannot ' claim the usb device' does anyone know how to resolve this? *** Error *** An error occurred in the io-library ('Could not claim the USB device'): Could not claim interface 0 (Device or resource busy). Make sure no other program (gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor) or kernel module (such as sdc2xx, stv680, spca50x) is using the device and you have read/write access to the device. *** Error (-53: 'Could not claim the USB device') **

[@sameenashaikh_29]

what would be the difference in the script if at all i was using python 2???

[@oneeyedphotographer]

02:55 you don't have a killall command?

[@Ajneb97]

Hello I am currently starting to know more about the Raspberry Pi and I have a question if you could answer me please. When you start typing commands in the console... Which console is that? Linux? Or the Raspberry Pi console= How can I do it if I use Windows? thx

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

I am SSH'd into the Raspberry Pi. On a Mac this can be done through the Mac's built in Terminal. On a Linux based machine, this can be done through the OS's built in Terminal. On a Windows based machine, this can be done through third party software, such as PuTTY. I have a tutorial on how to do this, and you can find it at: thezanshow.com/electronics-tutorials/raspberry-pi/tutorial-1 That particular tutorial shows you how to setup a headless Raspberry Pi. You should be able to skip ahead to just the PuTTY section if you're already configured for SSH.

[@Ajneb97]

Thank you!@@alexanderbaran-harper4748

[@larrylaxdal]

Has anyone had any luck getting this script to work on startup? Modified rc.local to cd into the working directory and start the script. At first that resulted in errors relating to not being able to claim the USB, but adding additional sleep time to the start of the script cleared that up. Now the camera is taking photos regularly but they don't get copied to the working folder (not sure where they're actually going). The script still works fine if I execute it from the terminal. EDIT: For anyone who may come across this issue, I solved it by modifying the line in rc.local to run the script as the 'pi' user instead of the 'root' user (which is the default). The reason it doesn't work using the default is that the gphoto2 config files are stored in the 'pi' user's profile. The exact code I used in rc.local was (it also outputs a log): cd /home/pi/Desktop/camfolder && su pi -c 'python3 cam.py >> output.log 2>&1 &'

[@JFWooten4]

Can you do this with video?

[@TheCablebill]

shell command: killall gvfsd-gphoto2

[@BruceChastain]

this seems to be the simpler way to me.

[@matthewwarren5741]

tried this tutorial out with my pi2 and t2i, I've managed to get the camera to take pictures and everything else. However when i go to run the program to test it I get this error: pi@pi:~/Desktop/gphoto $ python3 imageCapture.py Traceback (most recent call last): File "imageCapture.py", line 4, in import signal, os, suprocess ImportError: No module named 'suprocess' Any idea why?

[@alexanderbaran-harper4748]

import subprocess, not suprocess. You are missing the b.

[@71youths]

The video I watched just before this also had thunder ant it was also about python and cameras. Spooky.

[@MrEdwardhartmann]

Thanks for the great video - I used a bunch of your code to build a wireless tether from my camera to my PC using a Pi ZeroW. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jancap6mq5arfMk I also plan to do something similar to build my own photobooth software. So, there is a lot more than time laps photography that you can use Gphoto2 a scripts for.

[@sebastianweber1762]

Hello Alexander i get the following error, i hope you can help me. Thx Traceback (most recent call last): File "imagecapture.py", line 61, in renameFiles() TypeError: renameFiles() missing 1 required positional argument: 'ID'

[@mydomix]

You are missing the ID inside of the (). You need in your loop renameFiles(ID)