What program do I need to view and download photos when EOS Rebel 300 is plugged into PC w/ Windows7

[phototaker10]

What program do I need to view and download photos when EOS Rebel 300 is plugged into PC with Windows 7? A program used to automatically open but no longer does and I don't know why

[ebiggs1]

You don't need any, and no driver is available, for the XT.  However, you must set the communicatios to PTP.  Then you don't need any additional software. Just what comes with Windoze 7 and a USB cable.

Go to the second 2 yellow settings tab (if memory serves me correctly) in the menu and scroll down to Communications and change it to PTP.

[TCampbell]

Modern cameras behave a bit like a USB "thumb drive" in terms of how they appear to your computer.  As the camera is saving images to the memory card (which has a FAT32 type filesystem on it), the computer can read that filesystem just like it could read a portable "thumb drive".  This is a bit of a simplification, but hopefully it conveys the general idea.

This wasn't true many years ago when Windows used a special protocol to communicate with camera (they did not appear to be "just a hard drive full of photos" being plugged in.

While the world of computing has moved on, you can still take advantage of the fact that the photos are, in fact, on a memory card (which is removeable) and that memory card actually does have a FAT32 filesystem.

You can pick up a CF card reader (most of these just plug into a USB port) and transfer the images by putting the card in the computer so the computer can copy the images off the card.

I use a Lexar brand CF card reader (there are MANY options out there, but I've come to trust the brand... a few other no-brand readers have flaked out on me.)  and though my camera actually does support directly attaching to the computer, the transfer speeds are much faster when I use the card reader method vs. the camera connection method.