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“Lock keys failed” error when importing photos from Canon Powershot S1 IS

Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.

Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.

Problem
When importing photos from my Canon Powershot S1 IS, I received the error “lock keys failed”.
Solution
Use PTP mode instead of Normal mode. This can be specified on the command line, but most users will prefer to install the gtkam package and specify it there:
  1. Install gtkam using Synaptic or the command sudo apt-get install gtkam
  2. Plug in your camera, and hit “Cancel” when you are asked if you want to import the photos
  3. Open gtkam
  4. From the “Camera” menu, select “Add Camera…”
  5. Click the Detect button, which will select “Canon PowerShot S1 IS (normal mode)” in the drop-down list
  6. In the drop-down list, select “Canon PowerShot S1 IS (PTP mode)”, which should be just one item down
  7. Click “OK”
  8. Screenshot of gtkamSelecting the correct folder in gtkam Using the tree-view on the left, expand the folders until you find the folder where the pictures are stored. In my case, it was Canon PowerShot S1 IS (PTP mode) -> store_00010001 -> DCIM -> 160CANON. As soon as I clicked on the 160CANON folder, the thumbnails appeared on the right. Please note that there may be several folders with the name XXXCANON, where XXX is the session number. THese will all contain photos, so be sure to follow the next steps for each folder!
  9. Go to “File” -> “Save Photos” -> “All”
  10. Open the folder you want to save into, don’t just highlight it. I recommend using the “Save photos” and “Save EXIF data” options. Either select “Use filename(s) provided by the camera” or type in some identifier in the “Filename prefix” field. I prefer to use a timestamp followed by a space.
  11. Click “OK”
Explanation
Gphoto2 is the program that is responsible for communicating with the camera. Their recent upgrade (2.1.5 to 2.1.6) with the Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) upgrade has broken normal-mode support for the Canon Powershot S1 IS. Downgrading to version 2.1.5 would require downgrading the entire operating system. The bug has been noted, but no bugfix has been released.
Resources
Debian package bug report

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