Canon DSLR and Canon Support

Well, I’m not a happy camper after a recent go around with Canon’s online support. I exchanged email with Mike Unsold of ImagesPlus about getting both of my Canon 350XT (aka Digital Rebel XT) cameras working at once. I had originally purchased ImagesPlus after emailing Mike and learning you could control more than one camera at once just by launching multiple instances of the program.

Well, not so fast there pardner. Yes, it works and Mike (and others) have done it. But I happen to actually like the Canon 350XT enough that I bought two of them. Same exact camera, updated to the same exact firmware (not that that is actually relevant to the problem in this case). ImagesPlus sort of works in the it can see both and it can initiate an exposure on both. But when the exposure ends, both cameras lock up when ImagesPlus tries to download the image. Mike believes the problem is in the Canon drivers and suggested I ask Canon. Sounds reasonable, so I did.

Canon’s official response:

Dear Roland Roberts:

Thank you for contacting Canon product support.  We value you as a Canon
customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

Regrettably, we do not offer any support for the Canon SDK or 
information on the drivers outside of what they do with the Canon 
software.  I am sorry for any inconvenience.

We hope this information is helpful to you.  Please feel free to contact
us again if you have any other questions or concerns.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

I’m not a happy Canon customer at this point and have to say, if you like Canon, great. If you want to use it for astronomy, don’t buy more than one. Not only does it not appear to work, but Canon’s answer is a polite "too bad." I’m hoping Canon will have a representative at NEAIC like they did last year so I can put the question to him/her (and let them know how lame I consider that answer above).