Working with Multiple Cameras

Cam2Com can work with multiple cameras connected to the computer at the same time.

By one press of a button, all connected cameras take a picture. Or, in the Time Lapse Photography, all connected cameras automatically take pictures using specified time intervals.

One Canon SD camera, one Olympus "Wheat" camera and several Olympus "Rye" cameras may be connected and instructed to take pictures at the same time.

The pictures can be saved in regular files or sent using FTP with automatically generated file names. 


The number of connected cameras is limited by the USB specification - up to 127 USB devices  can be connected to the computer at the same time. Practically, taking into account the time required to download multiple pictures, each of which is approximately 1MB in size, that number will be smaller.

By default, Cam2Com monitors camera connection and disconnection events. If you connect another camera to the computer, Cam2Com opens a window for that camera automatically, provided that the camera model was configured in the Select Camera Models dialog. If you disconnect a camera from the computer, Cam2Com marks the window of that camera as "disconnected". This functionality can be disabled in the General tab of the  Options dialog (Tools|Options...).

In any case, if synchronization between connected cameras and windows within Cam2Com is lost, refresh it by selecting the Tools|Refresh Connected Cameras menu item.


NOTE: While all possible measures have been taken to send the "take picture" command to all cameras at the same time, it is theoretically impossible that all cameras take a picture in the same microsecond. After all, USB is a serial bus and every camera gets it signal sequentially. The delay is of course very small, but then every camera has its own delay, the lag between pressing the shutter button and the time the camera actually takes a picture.

Presumably this lag must be very similar for cameras of the same model, but even for them, when auto focusing is involved, the mechanics of every camera work with its own speed. It is very likely that lighting conditions that are different for every camera may affect that lag as well.

In short, even if you get cameras all of the same model, select Manual mode, and set the same exposure and manual focus, the time difference between start of picture in different cameras may still be several tens of a second.