Last updated 18 March 2005

IMPORTANT: If you're trying to use a serial cable to transfer images, you are almost certainly wasting your time. I can't urge you too strongly to get a card reader and spare yourself the agony! It's sixty times faster than a serial cable, it works with any modern computer and it costs as little as thirty bucks. See the Adapters page for details.

The following information is for those unfortunates who for whatever reason MUST use a serial cable...

First let me say what this page doesn't cover: software for the earlier QuickTake 100 and QuickTake 150 cameras. Fairly often people come here looking for help with these two cameras. Unfortunately, the 100 and 150 share nothing but their names with the QuickTake 200. They were built for Apple by Kyocera, while the 200 is a Fuji camera. They don't use the same software as the 200, and the only source I know of for 100/150 Mac driver software is the Mac Driver Museum, which has software for both the 100 and 150. For the QuickTake 150, try this web page for driver software that reportedly works with Windows 95 and 2000.

Moreover, because the 100 and 150 models rely entirely on a serial connection to transfer pictures to the computer—they don't have removable media like the 200's SmartMedia cards—you are completely dependent on that software. Unfortunately, recent versions of the MacOS have "broken" the old QuickTake 100/150 software, and Apple apparently has better things to do than provide software updates. Translation: owners of these cameras are out of luck. QuickTake 200 users can buy a $30 USB card reader that will work with the newest Macs and PCs—100/150 users can't. If this describes you, my advice is to accept the situation and start shopping for a new camera. Things have improved tremendously since these three cameras were selling for $600-$1,000 new! Now, two hundred bucks and change will buy you 1,024 x 768 resolution, built-in flash and all kinds of other goodies that these old cameras lack. Check out low-end cameras from Canon, Olympus and Fuji.

Sheldon Presser discovered a little-known feature of the Mac shareware program ImageViewer: it has QuickTake 200 input capability! To quote from the website, "ImageViewer is a Mac application perfect for locating, displaying, organizing and printing GIF, JPEG, PICT and TIFF images. Use it to convert files from one graphic format to another and create previews and icons...[plus] simple editing like crop, scale, rotate, and invert, as well as adjusting brightness, contrast, and sharpness."

You will need Apple's QuickTime IC system extensions to use this feature of ImageViewer. These shipped with every camera, of course, and you can still download them from Apple's website in the form of the QuickTime IC Software Developer's Kit. If you've lost your CD-ROMs, try CamerAid...or get a card reader and abandon the serial-cable method altogether.

Another excellent shareware program that can download and work with QuickTake 200 images is Juri Munkki's CamerAid. It downloads images from most digital cameras, including the QuickTake 200 and Fuji DS-7, and also has batch processing commands, the ability to name photos automatically based on the time and date they were taken, and an "image enhancement expert." Of special interest to owners of recent Macs: version 1.1.4 and later "works around certain problems that MacOS 9 caused with many USB-to-serial adapters." Munkki is only asking $15 for all this—a bargain!

Once you have the images on your Mac, you'll want to work with them and perhaps convert them to other file formats. GraphicConverter from LemkeSoft is a powerful shareware utility that can translate to and from just about any file format you can name. It'll do batch conversions and even slide shows. Well worth having—and paying for!

Suppose you're a PC owner (or maybe have a Unix box) and you've found a QuickTake 200 dirt cheap at a flea market. Can you use it with your machine? Probably. If you download a copy of Fuji's DS-7 software (available for Windows 3.11, Windows 95 and Windows NT,and it reportedly runs under Windows XP with a couple of startup errors) and can buy or build a serial cable, it ought to work. You can also use the TWAIN drivers for Fuji's DS-300 camera, if you can find them on Fuji's site—as described below, they'll work with the DS-7. (Note: the 32-bit extension 'W32s' must be installed first, if you don't already have it.)

Compared to Apple's elegant "Camera Access" utility, Fuji's software is clunky and (occasionally) buggy. It does, however, offer one thing the Apple software doesn't: it can display the shutter speed and aperture at which each image was exposed. So if you're wondering what exposure times your camera is delivering (and why your handheld indoor shots look so shaky!), this is the way to satisfy your curiosity.

What about going the other way—using a QuickTake 200 with a PC via Fuji's software? Well, getting your QuickTake 200 to work with the Fuji software is possible, but it can be a little tricky. For one thing, you should know that Fuji's "SD-T7" camera software for PC's works only on Windows 95. It's incompatible with Windows NT, and Fuji has no plans to support NT in the near future. Also, you may have trouble getting this to work unless you change the software's default communications parameters from "AUTO" to 57,600 bps. (Thanks to Paul Christensen for these tips!) See the Troubleshooting Page for more tips on dealing with software problems on both Macs and PCs.

Bob Prangnell's EZ-AutoCam offers a variety of useful features to Windows users, including the ability to transfer images via serial port or adapter; browse thumbnail (miniature) images of your pictures; find pictures with keywords; and print multiple pictures per page. You can even set up a webcam using EZ-AutoCam's built-in FTP client! It's $29.95 (introductory price), but a downloadable demo version is available that you can try out for free. Pretty slick—give it a try!

Here's a nifty piece of shareware for Windows users that has an extra twist: Picture Information Extractor (P.I.E.) not only imports images from your camera and lets you view and organize them, but it will also "extract the camera information from the raw .jpg and renames the PIC000XX.JPG filename to a more computer friendly name keyed to the date and time as well as other photo information. Now your favorite picture viewer can display your photos in correct chronological order." Clever! P.I.E. works with most digital cameras including the Fuji DS-7 (and presumably the QuickTake 200 as well, though I haven't verified this). Don't despair, Mac users—a similar Mac utility is in the works.

Many QuickTake 200 and DS-7 cameras came bundled with Adobe's PhotoDeluxe, a low-priced image retouching program. PC users may be interested to know that Adobe has just released a set of patches for PhotoDeluxe. Reader Greg George, who brought these to my attention, says that "Picture loads and transformations are processed significantly faster with these fixes, and it seems to me that a few nasty bugs causing protection errors have been fixed." Definitely worth a download if you're using this software!

You may also want to check out Adobe's ActiveShare, a free utility for managing collections of images in Windows PCs.

A UNIX digital camera utility that supports the DS-7 and QuickTake 200 is GPhoto. Reader Matt Martin reports that while it's still under development, it works fine with his DS-7—and unlike many UNIX apps, it has a graphical user interface.

Return to the QuickTake 200/Fuji DS-7 Users' Page

If you have tips or suggestions about either of these two cameras, or if you've found any accessories I haven't mentioned here, send email to Andy Baird so I can put the information on this page.