DCS 200 TWAIN driver and KC2 converter

Discuss older Nikon-based Kodak digital SLRs, including DCS 100, DCS 200, NC2000, DCS 400/600/700-series, etc. Ask questions, post general comments, anecdotes, reviews and user tips.
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DCS 200 TWAIN driver and KC2 converter

Post by NikonWeb »

KODAK Professional DCS 200 Digital Camera
TWAIN Compliant Driver Version 4.3
01/24/94:

http://www.nikonweb.com/files/dcs200_twain.zip (441 KB)

kc2bmp by Brian Sweeney: Includes a stand-alone Windows executable (exe file) to read and convert Kodak '.KC2' files to .BMP, and - for those interested - some Fortran code and support .asm files. A sample DCS 200 file is also included.

The format is trivial, a 1536x1024 pixel 8-bit image starting at file
offset '13800'x. The file includes a thumbnail as well, and "inactive"
pixels ('sprockets') at '7800'x. This camera produced 1536x1024 images,
not the advertised 1524x1012 that the Kodak processor imports..

http://www.nikonweb.com/files/dcs200_kc2bmp.zip (1.2 MB)

Thanks Brian!

Jarle
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DCS 200 TWAIN driver

Post by NikonWeb »

For easy reference, here's some info posted by Ross_Alford in another thread:

I thought I would summarize my experience for the benefit of anyone else who is trying to get a DCS200 to communicate with a Windows machine.

I installed them on a Windows 98 machine, where they work fine. I could not resist also trying to install them on a Win XP machine, which simply does not even recognize that anything has been installed.

To get the WIn 98 machine talking to the DCS200, I had to downgrade its ASPI layer from version 2.7.1 (available from Adaptec's web site, the most recent version) to version 2.6 (also available from Adaptec; the last version that works with Windows 95, according to them). With version 2.7.1 installed I kept getting a message saying that the ASPI layer was not initialized, even though the aspicheck utility said it was fine, and other ASPI-dependent things were working.

I also found that calling the TWAIN driver from Photoshop 5.5 (the version installed on the WIn 98 machine) sort-of worked; I could talk to the camera and see thumbnails, but I caused a crash every time I tried to acquire an image. Got around that by not calling the TWAIN module from Photoshop. Instead, I call it from Vuepro 32, an image viewing program I use (available from www.hamrick.com as shareware, and a very nice program). Earlier versions of photoshop, and other image software, may well work fine too. I just import images into Vuepro, save them as TIF files, and copy to my main computer to fiddle in Photoshop CS2.
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Post by Brian Sweeney »

I still have Photoshop 3.0. I think it was bundled with the camera- or with the Microtek 1850 bought at about the same time.

Glad to see people keeping these antiques going.
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Post by Ross_Alford »

Thought others might be interested in this:

I had a look at the dcraw converter by Dave Coffin, http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/ and discovered it did not do DCS200 files. Sent him a sample, and he has already added the ability to decode them to dcraw. The source code is available from his page, or you can download a compiled version from http://www.insflug.org/raw/

You need version 8.46 to be able to decode dcs200 files.

It is a command-driven program (at least the Windows version is), but very easy to use. Put a bunch of DC2 files in a directory, put dcraw.exe somewhere that Windows can find it (or put it in the directory with the dc2 files, it is a very small program), open a command prompt window, cd to the directory with the files in it, and enter

dcraw -a -o1 -T *.kc2
ren *.tiff *.tif

The first line runs dcraw, the second changes the file extensions from tiff (which Windows machines will probably not recognize as tif files, mine doesn't, anyway) to tif, which they will.

within a sort time, you have a (normal, not Kodak format) TIF file for every dc2 file. It leaves the original dc2 files unmodified as well, in case you were worried. Way easier than doing them one at a time using the Kodak driver, and dcraw will run on your fast Win XP machine. My strategy for DCS200 files is going to be to use the TWAIN driver to copy them as a group to the old machine, then put them on the new machine and use dcraw to decode them.

Oops, just discovered that although Vuepro has no trouble with the tif files, Photoshop CS2 won't open them--says it has a program error?? If you leave out the -T option, dcraw writes .ppm files, which CS2 will open.

Dave said that he could improve the color balance if he had a dcs200 file with a photo of a Macbeth color checker in sunlight. Anyone have one of those?

Cheers,
Ross
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