can you explain a bit what such support could mean and what gphoto does exactly?

from gphoto.org / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPhoto

gPhoto2 is a free, redistributable, ready to use set of digital camera software applications for Unix-like systems
gPhoto supports not just retrieving of images from camera devices, but also upload and remote controlled configuration and capture, depending on whether the camera supports those features.
It has support for the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) and will also connect to devices that use the Media Transfer Protocol
gPhoto provides a command-line interface. gtkam is the official GUI client for gPhoto. Other clients are the KDE program digiKam and the GNOME program Shotwell.

There has to be a protocol for setting camera parameters from outside the camera (dictator, mobile phone...).
Is there already a protocol implemented? ptp / gphoto could be an option for this...
Every (supported) parameter of a digital camera can be read/set with this protocol.
The picture transfer itself is the not so important part.

For time-lapse it is a very useful tool:

gphoto2 -I 10 -F 3000 --capture-image-and-download --filename "%Y%m%d%H%M%S.jpg"

this command makes a time-lapse of 3000 frames with 10s interval, files are saved in a defined pattern.

I think gphoto(2) support might be interesting, although it seems to me that it is pretty much Linux only (which isn't a problem for me at all).

Contacting the gphoto(2) folks is a good idea, but I'm pretty sure that we (apertus) won't have the time to work on that part. That said, we will certainly help with such an effort if somebody wants to work on this.

Hello, I'm new here. By a request from Sebastian Pichelhofer, this is the copy of my last email:

I'm not a gphoto2 developer, only using its API in my programs and trying to help them with debugging and testing. I have experiences with some other camera interfaces, like vfw, v4l, BMD, QuickTime... and in my opinion gphoto2 is the best amongst these. It's for photo cameras now, perhaps because video cameras are already supported by the older v4l on Linux.

A short summary about it:

libgphoto2 - this is a shared library, the main system.
gphoto2 - a small command line frontend for libgphoto2.

These are the main functions:

Preview mode: supported only by a few cameras, a low resolution live view picture from the camera.

Capture mode: the camera takes a picture and the program can download it or keep it on the camera's memory card.

These are the basic modes, there are others based on these (tethered capture, movie capture...).

Another important interface is the settings widget list. These are not actual GUI widgets,
but a property list from the camera. You can map these into real widgets. There are radio buttons, menus, sliders etc. and also read-only types, like battery status. You can change, for example ISO, focus, resolution, raw/jpeg etc. with these, everything the camera supports. Usually 20-30 parameters.

Many cameras are using the PTP protocol for this, which has a standard to provide the supported settings list. So it's up to the camera's firmware.

There is a backend inside libgphoto2, the camlibs part for the camera specific drivers. So perhaps even you can provide your own driver for libgphoto2.

I don't want to be an unwanted adviser just really hope both gphoto2 and your project will be successful.

Bests,
Laszlo

Welcome Laszlo, we are glad to get your support!

Comment from Marcus Meissner (mastermind of gphoto) on gphoto-devel group:

The PTP standard is ISO 15740, costs around 120 EUR from ISO or could be found in, err, copies, via google.

The USB lowlevel part arounds PTP are openly documented:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140820031141/http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/usb_still_img10.pdf

Thanks to Laszlo too...