Digital electronic camera having an external input/output interface through which the camera is monitored and controlled

Abstract

A digital electronic camera which communicates through an input/output interface with an external processing device which monitors and/or controls the camera. The I/O interface is a plug-in card which is preprogrammed with a communication control program. The camera communicates with the external device in order to output status information to the external device, receive commands from the external device and to transfer images and sound between the camera and the external device. Various parameters describing the state of the camera are transmitted to the external device including characteristics of the captured images, whether the flash is ready, the state of the camera battery, whether the memory is full, or the parameters used when capturing images. The commands which can be sent from the external device to the camera include commands to change any of the parameters of the camera and a command to capture an image or a series of images, and whether or not sound is recorded.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.