Pentax DSLR support.

[Tommy Lim KW]

Hope Pentax DSLR will get support in NINA as well.

[Samuel Roehr]

Ricoh has released an SDK for their recent Pentax cameras, and it would be awesome to see an implementation in NINA using it, but it the meantime I have come up with a (sort-of) working hack method involving the NINA File Camera.

I have this (sort of) working with a Pentax K-1 - it should work with any recent models that support SDK tethering. I’m not sure about older cameras, but there may be a way to achieve the same thing with different software.

I’ll get to the ‘sort of’ shortly.

What you need:

Suitable Pentax camera (K-1 works fine).

USB connection between camera and computer (WIFI may work, but I haven’t tested it).

Pentax WiFi & USB Tether

Java RE 8 (for the tether program)

Optional: Pentax mains adaptor (for battery-less shooting)

Optional: Mount with a SNAP port to fire the shutter.

How it works:

Normally, when you hook up a Pentax camera via USB it goes into PC file transfer mode, which disables all shooting controls, including the shutter port. To solve this, you need to find some way to kick it into tethered shooting mode - sadly I’m no programmer (though I suspect it wouldn’t be hard to make a simple application which just switches the camera into tethering). Luckily other people have already done the hard work! In this case, Adam from PentaxForums created the Pentax WiFi & USB Tether application, primarily to make easier batch shooting via tethering, but it works fine to enable shooting while tethered via other means (eg. SNAP port). It also has some other handy features for us, including automated transfer of captured files from the camera to a location of your choice on your computer.

Setting up is easy - install, run, connect the Pentax camera. Once that is done you can select the location that you will want to transfer the captured images and move over to NINA.

In NINA select the File Camera, use the settings dialogue to point it to where ever you set the images to be transfered, make sure its set to Bayered, and connect.

Now you can merrily shoot away - you could queue it in the tether software, set up an external intervalometer or have NINA control it via a SNAP port.

The ‘sort of’…:

Ok, here comes the ‘sort of’. It works fine with camera produced JPEGs, but not with the RAW files. Why? Well, Pentax cameras produce RAW files in either their PEF or Adobe’s DNG format - DCRaw certainly supports both Pentax RAW formats, so it seems that NINA isn’t indexing either of these file types.

When I change the extension on either RAW format to .RAW, NINA picks them up, has DCRaw process them, and then the image is displayed in NINA. Success!

It seems the fix is to have the NINA File Camera index some additional file types, and I’ll lodge a new ticket to that effect.

[Stefan B]

If someone wants to get this a go, the N.I.N.A. architecture now offers plugins to implement device drivers.

[Export(typeof(IEquipmentProvider))]
public class FujiProvider: IEquipmentProvider<ICamera> {
  [ImportingConstructor]
  public FujiProvider([whichever importable interfaces you need]) {
    // your ctor impl.
  }

  public IList<ICamera> GetEquipment() {
    // your code to scan for fuji cameras and return a list of FujiCameras with your specific implementation
  }
}

Furthermore you can export a Datatemplate with the key <Fully Qualified Device Type TypeName>_CameraSettingsto add custom settings for your camera.

These interfaces and changes can be accessed with the nuget or a later one: https://www.nuget.org/packages/NINA.Plugin