Just back from visit to Best Buy Geek Squad. They checked out USB port on Powershot and all is well and it is clean with no issues. We tested out another cable and still same issue. They did some research and discovered that on the Mac operating system with the photos app Powershot is supposed to behave this way, but on Windows one needs to plug in camera once to do transfers and not twice. On Mac once is charge only, and twice is sync.
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If you have a Canon please respond
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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100% agree. I charge my batteries in a battery charger, and I download files from my cards using a card reader.
- When I come back from a shoot, I often have multiple cards to download files from. Am I supposed to swap cameras to and from my USB ports? No. That's a huge reason I use card readers.
- Having to connect a camera to one of my USB ports for charging/file transfer would drive me nuts. My cameras stay in the case, only the cards come with me to my work desk.
- File transfer is faster with a card reader than from the camera.
- Battery chargers are likewise higher power than the USB port on my computers, so they charge faster. Plus they have other features such as letting me see the progress/percentage of my battery charge, and I can line up several batteries that need to be charged, rather than having a camera sit there getting warm as it charges batteries one after another.
- I use a piece of software called Photo Mechanic that starts to ingest and apply metadata to files as soon as the card is inserted into the card reader. This too makes my workflow faster and easier, and having to directly attach a camera would only slow me down.
That is fine for you but it won’t work for me. My shots are up to 100 stills at 10MP so it does not take forever to transfer files. Also I have 2 canons I shoot with one for stills and another for video. My MacBook is plugged in most of the time so I don’t notice any battery issues.
You said "nothing wrong with the USB cable method" and I only wanted to point out that there are lots of things wrong with that method for some people.
The batteries I'm referring to are my camera batteries, not my laptop battery. Your camera battery is what gets charged when you plug a camera into your computer's USB port, that's what you referred to in your first post about having your camera charge on the first plugin to USB, and only transferring files the second time you plugged in. I never mentioned laptop batteries.
Check out a later post I made in this thread about my visit to Best Buy's Geek Squad. Apparently on MacOS Powershot is supped to behave this way. I DID NOT know this and thought something wrong with my Powershot. But they checked out the port, and had me test with another cable.
The reason I created this thread was to see if someone else also had a Powershot and could verify this, which would have saved me a trip to Best Buy. Oh well...
Oh and besides the amount of wear on my camera battery is so slow at transferring 10MP images its not even noticeable for me.
But perhaps if I took 4K video with Powershot I would buy a card reader. So for me a card reader is not necessary. My video is shot at Full HD anyways.
This is also the method described in my Canon user manual, which is what the USB data port is for.
Have you tried setting Image Capture as your default app and use that to import.
No I use the Photo app since it organizes things very well. But perhaps there issue is the photos app on the Mac.
Maybe worth trying to see if it acts the same....
You can select a specific folder/location to save to.
I saw the Best Buy post, and how they helped you figure it out.
Have you ever tried Image Capture? It's a little piece of software, should be in your Applications folder by default. It allows you to manually manage files when plugging a device (including an iPhone) into a USB port.
That may help your Powershot issue. You can tell Image Capture what default behavior you want to occur when you plug in a device, such as automatically opening Photos when you plug in your Powershot. Or opening the Finder, if you simply want to drag-and-drop files onto your computer.
I have not since Tiger. I want to test this app but do not want my 400 shots to vanish from Powershot. I want to take a few test shots and have those transfer to desktop. How do I set this up? Thanks…
Hmm… let me think on how to set it up. Have not used that app since Tiger.Maybe worth trying to see if it acts the same....
You can select a specific folder/location to save to.
Literally just open Image Capture, connect camera (you may need to set Image Capture as the default app to avoid the charging issue).
All pictures will be displayed.
Select a location to save.
Select which photos to save.
Nothing will be removed from camera.
Nothing to worry about, nothing to set up. Nothing will be erased unless you tell it to erase images.
Just like @MarkC426 said, nothing to set up, it's a very small piece of software. It's not like Photos, it's just a very simple and limited way to set default Finder behaviors when your computer recognizes a device that has been plugged in.
Wow!! I just did it before this post and I think it solved the issue. I set image capture to open photos every time when this camera connects and did a test by putting Mac to sleep 2 times and then connecting camera and everytime it opened in sync mode without the charging issue when first connected. I think that solved it.. Thanks!!
I think I got the problem resolved thank you. I did test it like 5 times and each time it opened in sync mode.
I have a canon usb scanner someplace in the garage does that also qualify for this thread!
I think that this thread illustrates why it’s bad to stick with only one method, especially when it doesn’t work. I no longer own a Powershot camera but I never had an issue with Image Capture or card reader. In order to grow as a person, one needs to have an open mind and adapt. A card reader is rather inexpensive compared to other pieces of gear and many can read multiple types of cards.