Capture properties can be controlled one camera at a time for the camera whose window is currently active.

To open the Capture Properties dialog, select “Camera|Capture Properties” or click the  toolbar button.

In the dialog, select the settings you want. They should be self explanatory and match the camera manual.

You can take pictures without closing the dialog, selecting the same or different settings for every picture. It is convenient to always keep this dialog open. Just move it aside and work normally. There is also a Take Picture button, , at the bottom of the dialog.

Pictures may be saved automatically right after they are loaded into the computer if selected in the Saving Pictures tab of the Options dialog.

When a picture is displayed on the screen, the capture properties are displayed next to the picture. Refer to them when adjusting capture properties to take another picture in the series if you want to experiment to create the best possible picture.

While the Capture Properties dialog is open, you can select a different camera by clicking on its window or by selecting it in the Capture Properties dialog.

When Cam2Com starts, Capture Properties dialog is displayed automatically on the same place where it was when quitting Cam2Com. If Capture Properties dialog was not open when quitting Cam2Com, it is not displayed automatically.

Storing Camera and Capture Properties in Files

Almost all camera settings relevant to taking pictures can be saved in a file to quickly load them later.

To save current camera settings, select “File|Save Capture Settings...” and save them to a file as normal. By default, the file extension is .cpff.

To load current camera settings, select “File|Load Capture Settings...” and load them from file as normal.

The following settings are saved:

• Program Mode
• Aperture (for Manual or Aperture Priority Program Modes)
• Exposure Time (for Manual or Shutter Priority Program Modes)
• Exposure Bias (not for Manual Program Mode)
• ISO Speed
• Flash Mode
• White Balance
• Metering Mode
• Type of picture taken (JPEG, TIFF, or Raw) and its Resolution.
• LCD On/Off.
  NOTE: Because there is no way to get current LCD status from the camera, it is Off by default unless it has previously been set On in Cam2Com. This can only affect you if you connect a camera to a PC with LCD already On and start Cam2Com after that. In this case, switch LCD Off or On using Cam2Com and the state will be synchronized.
• Optical Zoom
  NOTE: When an Optical Zoom other than the minimal one is used, the camera may go out of focus when loading settings. To fix this, open the Adjust Focus dialog and switch Focus Mode between Manual Focus, Macro, etc. until focus is restored.
• Focus Mode - if supported by the camera
• Focus Position (for Manual focus Mode only) - if supported by the camera

Settings can be loaded only into the same camera model as the one from which they were saved.

Cam2Com does not control some camera features like Electrical Zoom or Function; these features are unaffected by the loaded settings and stay unchanged.

Loading Camera and Capture Properties at program startup

A special command line parameter /CPFF is used to load settings into every connected camera right after Cam2Com starts or when the camera is connected after start.

Format of the string in the /CPFF parameter value is the following:

/CPFF="MyCam1.cpff":MyCam1/"MyCam2.cpff":MyCam2/"AllOtherCams.cpff"

Here "MyCam1.cpff" is the cpff file name, it may include full path and must be quoted. If it does not include the full path, the path is relative to the current directory. MyCam1 is the ID of the camera into which the settings must be loaded. Camera ID is delimited from the file name by a colon ‘:’. This combination may be repeated as many times as needed, separating each next pair by the slash character ‘/’.At the end there may be another file name without the camera name. This is set of parameters to load into ALL cameras (into which parameters have not yet been loaded by the explicit camera name).

Note: Cam2Com only allows loading CPFF files into the same camera model as it was saved from. For that it writes the camera model into the file. If you need to load CPFF files into multiple cameras of different models, delete the line with the camera model from the CPFF file using a text editor. Be aware, that some parameters in the CPFF file may have different meaning (or be out of range) for different camera models.