Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Non-standards

I really like the smaller camera companies, Fuji, Olympus, Pentax, Sony. They often make some fabulous products which the "Canikon" hegemony has no interest in.
But: they are often clueless when it comes to using standard tech. Like a camera where you can't change the battery, you have to plug in the whole thing with a special apparatus to charge it.

Or this one: There's a firmware update now to Olympus E-M1. And it turns out that instead of giving you a file you put on the camera's memory card, you have to install a special app on your computer, then connect the camera to the computer, and the update will happen over the Net...

Great. I find out how to access the USB port on the camera, you have to lift out the tiltable screen first... of course.  Only now it turns out: none of my USB cables fit in the durn camera!
It is already bad enough that there are four different male plugs for USB, but this...
I google around a bit, and find somebody selling a USB cable for Olympus. It looks a bit different. Then it dawns on me, I still have the box the camera came in. I look in that box. No cable. Aha, there's a section of the cardboard origami trick which is so subtle as to be almost invisible, and there's the cable.
Indeed, it fits. Olympus has made and demands use of their own special USB plug, lord knows why.

And then it turns out that the installer or the camera won't recognize the USB connection, so I can't install anyway. I'll bet anything that if they'd just given us a file to put on the memory card, there'd have been no issue.

Normally I love technology, but sometimes I have sympathy for those who long for a simpler life.

USB B? Mini? Micro? None of them, it is "Olympus"

5 comments:

TC [Girl] said...

Oh, Lordy! Does that mean that Robin(?), of Olympus, needs to be contacted?? :-/

Bru said...

Try connecting the USB cable directly to the computer, with no USB hub in the way.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks, Bru, I did that. (I don't use a hub.) just for good measures, I also tried via the keyboard.

John Krumm said...

Make sure you choose "storage" on the lcd when you connect the camera. Not obvious, but they've done it that way forever.

Pete said...

I've been caught out with this interface too. Why on earth they chose to use a proprietary plug is beyond me. It's incredibly inconvenient and gains nothing.