To download images from your digital camera, simply connect the camera to the USB port of your computer using the USB cable provided by the camera's manufacturer along with the camera. Depending on your camera model you may need to switch your camera to a special data transfer mode. Consult the camera's manual on how to achieve this.

There are three possibilities for accessing the pictures on the camera. USB mass storage or PTP (also known as PictBridge) are the most widely used protocols. Some camera models do not work with either one and need special drivers provided by gphoto2 (Section 16.11, “Troubleshooting”).

If your camera can be switched to a USB mass storage device, select this option. After connecting the camera to the USB port of your computer and turned the camera on, the new USB device is automatically detected and mounted. KDE lets you select the action to take in the event of any such device being mounted. You can choose to start Digikam or any other image viewing/processing application whenever a device of this type is mounted.

To set up a camera in Digikam, select Camera+Add Camera. First, try to auto-detect the camera with Auto-Detect. If this fails, browse the list of supported cameras for your model with Add. If your camera model is not included in the list, try an older model or use USB/IEEE mass storage camera and confirm with OK.