[Shotwell] shotwell live mode

[Bruno Girin]

On Tue, 2010-11-30 at 18:09 -0800, Jim Nelson wrote:

> > Next step would be to write a camera widget which uses gphoto's
> > CameraWidget to build an UI. I think it's not possible to get the TFT's
> > picture into shotwell yet, but preview should already be possible and
> > remote control. As an addition I want to add features that the camera
> > doesn't support, e.g. time lapse.
> >
> 
> Before you jump in, I would suggest discussing further here how this feature
> would look in Shotwell and filing ticket(s) in our Trac database (
> http://trac.yorba.org).  We here at Yorba are sensitive about how new
> features are implemented, and even whether they belong in Shotwell at all.
> 
> Frankly, I'm not convinced Shotwell is the place for this kind of thing -- I
> feel like it would be better served by a separate app.  (Take a look at
> Cheese for a good example of a photo app that does one thing really, really
> well.)  However, if you can describe how this would look and work inside
> Shotwell, we might be convinced that it's a Good Thing.

Such a feature would make Shotwell a fantastic tool for studio work,
where you want to be able to take a picture, check the results
immediately on a good size screen, correct the shot, take another
picture, etc. Providing that facility in Shotwell, which also manages
the photo library, would mean that you could potentially tag them on the
fly with details of the shoot and import them straight through. I've
done that on a Mac using the software provided with Canon SLR cameras
and it really makes a studio workflow a lot more streamlined.

One of the challenges would be to ensure that users are not confused by
the feature if they accidentally select it.


> >
> > But here's my first question:
> > shold I add a new entry to the tree or add a button to the ImportPage to
> > switch to live mode? They're quite exclusive on my cameras, don't know
> > about others.
> >
> 
> That's a good question to start with -- since the ImportPage is tied to the
> camera in the sidebar, I would think the button would go there.  If the user
> clicks it, Shotwell would presumably jump to a new page where the live
> preview was shown, options for time lapse, etc. would live.

I'd agree that a button in the ImportPage would work best for the
following reasons:
      * as you say, ImportPage is tied to the camera so that
        disambiguates situations where you have more than one camera
        connected;
      * a number of cameras are exclusive: either you import or you are
        in live mode but not both at the same time;
      * in terms of workflow, it doesn't really make sense to mix the
        two.

Also note that cameras will differ in the way they deal with that
feature: some will provide a live preview, others won't but will still
allow you to set every setting, take the picture and immediately upload
it to the computer (that's what my Canon 5D does).

Bruno