DCIM

[Grandpappy]

Hi,
I understand that digital camers,etc, create a DCIM folder on any card,etc, that you put into your camera,phone,etc, but why does the camera then not recognise any photo that you drop into that folder,with your computer,from another scource, say 'save image as' into the DCIM folder on the memory card in the card reader slot?
Does the image have to be created by THAT camera and why does the computer find the 'image' while the camera does'nt?
Surely if there is a DCIM folder on the card then the camera just looks for that folder and displays what it finds in there,or is it slightly more complcated than that?
An explanation (simple!) would be interesting.
Cheers

[VHG]

Well cameras work with JPEG files so if you dropped say a GIF file in there it may not find it.

But I would have thought it would display a JPEG file that it finds in there (but never tried it so dont know)

[ChuckFickens]

Most cameras create a sub directory of the DCIM directory and put their files in the sub directory (the sub directory will be 3 numbers followed by 5 letters) and they will only recognise files in their own sub directory. This is done so you can use the same card in mulitple cameras and the files don't interfere/overwrite each other. so camera a will create a sub folder called 123abcde and camera b will create one called 321edcba and each camera is only aware of it's own particular directory.

[AlBags]

Because that is not the folder in which the images are stored.
They are in a sub-directory of this which you are not going to see .. as many sub-directories are opaque to the viewer.

[Grandpappy]

Thanks for that ChuckFickens,that explains quite a lot.
Very much appreciated.