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EDSDK4J

This is a Java wrapper around the EDSDK that gives you full access to your Canon SLR camera via the EDSDK on Windows*. The features include:

  • Taking and downloading pictures
  • Manually adjusting focus
  • Setting apperature, exposure, ISO
  • Accessing live view

(*) With a few changes it might also work on Mac OSX.

Applying for SDK access

Before you can use this library you need to obtain the EDSDK native library from Canon. You can do so via their developers program:

Once you were granted access - this may take a few days - download the latest version of their library and follow the usage instructions.

Architecture

edsdk4j architecture overview

Using the EDSDK from Java directly is possible using the edsdk.native package, but because of threading difficulties and the involved data types this can be a bit painful. In the edsdk.utils package you find a small layer built on top of the EDSDK that gives you more Java-like examples.

Most notably, all calls have synchroneous and async calls. The async variants give you a CanonTask and you can choose if you want to wait for the result or be notified when it's done.

CanonCamera slr = new CanonCamera(); 
slr.openSession();

// Use the blocking variant to get a result immediately. 
File file = slr.shoot()[0]; 
System.out.println( "File: " + file.getAbsolutePath() );

// Use async handlers to continue your code immediately 
slr.shootAsync().whenDone( f -> System.out.println( f ) ); 

// close session is always blocking.
// because commands are queued this won't be executed 
// until the above slr.shoot() finished it's work. 
slr.closeSession(); 

Pay attention to the parameters you're setting!

The EDSDK does not check whether the parameters you're setting are actually suitable for your camera model. This can lead to very strange and possibly unfixable configurations, in the worst case you can brick your camera with the infamous error 99.

I mostly tested with the EOS550/600 and had no problems so far, but one user reported a repair estimate of 400€ after bricking a 50D by just changing the quality setting. See kritzikratzi#20 It's hard to tell what happened exactly and I'm almost 100% certain that that's not normal, but please be aware there is a slim chance of this happening to you as well.

Getting started

	CanonCamera slr = new CanonCamera(); 
	slr.openSession();
	File file = slr.shoot()[0]; // (*)
	slr.closeSession();
	
	(*) If you have raw+jpeg enabled you'll have two 
	images in that array. Usually it's just one. 

For more look at the examples in src/gettingstarted.

Notes

In case you need to regenerate the JNA wrapper classes:

set EDSDK_HOME=path-to-edsdk
ant generate-wrapper

This does not need to be run, unless you want to regenerate the bindings for the latest version of the EDSDK because you need to use the newest features.

Issues:

  • Currently JNAerator is not detecting __stdcall correctly so the Callbacks defined in EdSdkLibrary need to be manually modified to extend StdCallCallback. Technically EdSdkLibrary itself should also extend StdCallLibrary but it's possible to workaround this using options passed into the Native.loadLibrary() method (see CanonCamera class for this workaround).

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