Transferring Images to Pen Drive

I have just bought a Canon EOS 300D (and am waiting for the Ikelite housing to be released....waiting...waiting).

Anyway, I was wondering whether you could transfer directly from Camera to a USB pendrive to save on taking a laptop around? It doesn't state it in the camera doco, and I haven't actually picked up the camera yet (have to wait for late night shopping on Thursday night).

I know I can transfer directly from the camera to a printer, but don't know what format it will end up in - anyone have any ideas?

The reason for this question is (other than the obvious one of storage) that I am a programmer and can see a possible market niche....

Doesn't the camera have a "mini" USB port and not a full sized one?

In either case, I would guess that the camera needs some kind of OS to interface with before transferring images. Just a guess though.

Cheers

James

I'm not sure about the USB, but the picture in the user manual appears to be a full size usb, and *apparently* you can connect this directly into a printer for printing direct from the camera, so there's obviously some sort of firmware there already.

I'm sorry that I'm not being really specific, but I don't pick the camera up till thursday (can't wait either!!!)

My thought process was that it would be a lot cheaper & easier if I was able to take a 1Gb pen drive with me on holiday, rather than a laptop...if the camera could download to the external media on its own, that would be perfect. I'd only have to take a couple of 256Mb CF cards and a pen drive, rather than buy a laptop & take that with me.

you gotta take a lap top so you can download images and see what you 've taken good, bad, or ugly that way you can change settings etc plus it gives you something to do on the plane on the way home!!!!

Hey,

I don't thing it could.

I don't know what is the protocol to print through USB but if it is even close with the printing through LPT than you can definitely not store directly the pix on the pen drive.

You are right, it would be pretty cool though.

(I write firmware too).

I think the camera should act as a USB master and identify in its own OS (that by the way should be a full blown OS) the pen drive as another HDD and have a command to transfer the files.

It would be pretty cool to start hacking in one of those and write some small firmware to do that.

Vlad

Vlad - I haven't been able to find a developer's kit for Canon (like the Kodak one) - would you (or anyone else) know if there is one available for developers?

Also, I heard that there is now a portable CD W drive that accepts a CF card as the source (it was talked about in some magazine in the UK, and I got the info from a non-technical person over the phone last night). Has anyone tried one yet?