Tom Diaz
Well-known
Transferring Panasonic GX-7 Pictures Directly to a Mac
After a long struggle I was able to make this work, and I am sharing the procedure with other suffering GX-7 and Mac users. I was not content to let my experience with this great camera be compromised by the difficult Wi-Fi procedure. I am taking my camera on trips with me before long, for what I hope is a lot of street shooting, and I was hoping to be able to make transfer of images easier. I keep my camera in a half case most of the time, and—I know this is not a huge deal—I would rather not have to take it out of the case, find the SD card reader, remove the card, etc., every time I want to unload some pictures.
The Wi-Fi procedure is difficult to set up. Follow the directions here exactly. However, once set up, I am hoping it will be faster and more convenient than other methods.
I use the latest Mac OS: version 10.10.1, or, in Apple’s nomenclature, “Yosemite.” I upgraded the GX-7 firmware to its latest, version 1.3.
Note: This procedure allows me to transfer my pictures to a GX-7 when I am not on my home Wi-Fi network, such as when I am out in the field. It uses a little private network set up directly between the camera (which acts as a file server) and the Mac. There would be a different procedure, which is not of interest to me, if you wanted to transfer pictures using your home Wi-Fi network.
Checklist
The following checklist is important, to avoid complications of Wi-Fi networking, Mac file security, and Panasonic’s implementation.
• Create a folder on your Mac. I called mine “GX-7 Pictures" and put it on my desktop. Right click on the folder, do Get Info, and be sure that “Shared Folder” is checked.
• Turn on Windows-type (SMB) file sharing: System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing>Options… and check “Share files and folders using SMB.”
• Know your Mac “short name.” You’re used to logging in on a screen that shows your full name, e.g., John Smith, above a password prompt. However, the GX-7 does not have a way to enter the space between John and Smith. You have to use the alternative “short name” (officially called the “Account Name” by Apple); it was created for you initially, and in this example would be something like johnsmith. To see what yours is, right-click on a folder you own, do Get Info, and see what the permissions box at the bottom contains representing “me” (you!).
• Know how to create a network on your Mac. In this procedure, when you select the Panasonic option the Panasonic will display the IDs for itself, and you will type them into the Mac. The ID is called an SSID.
• Set your Work Group to “WORKGROUP.” Wait—what? This is some magic Windows networking stuff, not even known to that many Windows users these days. System Preferences>Network>Advanced… tab>Click on the WINS button to see the WINS settings. Take note of the name of your computer (“NetBIOS Name”), which you will have to enter manually on the GX-7. Equally important: Be sure the Workgroup field contains the exact word WORKGROUP.
• In this example:
o Shared Folder “GX-7 Pictures”
o Short name “johnsmith”
o John’s (who must be an administrator of the Mac) password: gx7geek
o Computer name (NetBIOS Name): johnsmac
o Workgroup WORKGROUP
Procedure
This procedure creates a Wi-Fi connection between the Mac and the camera, for a designated purpose, such as sending pictures to the Mac as you take them or—this is considered different!—sending them later, as a group. For those two cases you would need two different connections.
Fortunately, once you have a successful, working connection, you can save it (“register” it) as a favorite, so you can use the connection next time.
1. Push the Wi-Fi button on the back of the GX-7.
2. Select New Connection.
3. Select function: I am choosing “Send Images While Recording.”
4. Select the destination: PC (I know—it’s a Mac, but just deal with it).
5. Select connection method: Choose “Direct”
6. A second panel comes up asking you to choose the “Wi-Fi Direct device.” Choose Manual Connection.
7. The camera displays an SSID like “GX7-027332” and a password (network key) like a1c994c027332. You’re camera is now like a little network router + server, and this provides the IDs—you are going to log into this camera-network.
a. On the Mac, click on the Wi-Fi icon.
b. Click “Join Other Network” and type in the SSID and password information. To type the “password” (key), choose the WEP security type, and type in the key value. (Check the “Show Password” box to make it easier on yourself.)
8. You will now look at the hour-glass search thing… for a long time! Be patient. You’ll have time for a quick bathroom break. After some minutes it will time out and ask you for the name of the computer (johnsmac, in our example):
a. When it times out it will give you the choice Manual Input. Select that.
b. Enter the name johnsmac. (I do not believe this name is case-sensitive.)
9. You should fairly quickly get a dialog asking for your username and password for the Mac! In our example, they are "johnsmith" and "gx7geek." Enter these in the correct case.
10. You should now see a dialog showing the shared folder on your Mac, in my example, “GX-7 Pictures.” Select that folder.
11. Try it out! The blue LED will blink when the camera is transmitting.
12. When you are satisfied that things are working save this connection for later use!
a. Push the Wi-Fi button again to bring up the dialog (it probably is titled “Send Images While Recording”).
b. Scroll down and select “Register the Current Destination to Favorite.”
The procedure is similar when you set up a connection for sending a batch of pictures after you take them. (That’s probably the more common use case, at least for me.) Notes about sending pictures as a batch:
• I don’t think there’s a way to say “send all the pictures on this card.” You can either select one or do a “multi-select,” which requires you to select them all one-by-one. It’s rather laborious, but it works.
• My GX-7, after I select multiple images, gives me a scary-looking message saying it is going to take 20 minutes or something to do the transfer. This is just some Panasonic bug. In reality it may take a minute or so.
• My camera always seems to revert to JPG as the format for sending images. If you want to send RAW or both, you can change that before you do the transfer:
o Push the Wi-Fi button on the camera to bring up a dialog titled “Send Images Stored in the Camera,” the first item of which is “Terminate the Connection.” (That’s what you do to break the connection with the computer, when you’re all done for the time being.)
o On this dialog, scroll down and select “Change Settings Stored in the Camera.” Choose your poison there.
Good luck. I'm sure people will post questions or clarifications here.
Tom
After a long struggle I was able to make this work, and I am sharing the procedure with other suffering GX-7 and Mac users. I was not content to let my experience with this great camera be compromised by the difficult Wi-Fi procedure. I am taking my camera on trips with me before long, for what I hope is a lot of street shooting, and I was hoping to be able to make transfer of images easier. I keep my camera in a half case most of the time, and—I know this is not a huge deal—I would rather not have to take it out of the case, find the SD card reader, remove the card, etc., every time I want to unload some pictures.
The Wi-Fi procedure is difficult to set up. Follow the directions here exactly. However, once set up, I am hoping it will be faster and more convenient than other methods.
I use the latest Mac OS: version 10.10.1, or, in Apple’s nomenclature, “Yosemite.” I upgraded the GX-7 firmware to its latest, version 1.3.
Note: This procedure allows me to transfer my pictures to a GX-7 when I am not on my home Wi-Fi network, such as when I am out in the field. It uses a little private network set up directly between the camera (which acts as a file server) and the Mac. There would be a different procedure, which is not of interest to me, if you wanted to transfer pictures using your home Wi-Fi network.
Checklist
The following checklist is important, to avoid complications of Wi-Fi networking, Mac file security, and Panasonic’s implementation.
• Create a folder on your Mac. I called mine “GX-7 Pictures" and put it on my desktop. Right click on the folder, do Get Info, and be sure that “Shared Folder” is checked.
• Turn on Windows-type (SMB) file sharing: System Preferences>Sharing>File Sharing>Options… and check “Share files and folders using SMB.”
• Know your Mac “short name.” You’re used to logging in on a screen that shows your full name, e.g., John Smith, above a password prompt. However, the GX-7 does not have a way to enter the space between John and Smith. You have to use the alternative “short name” (officially called the “Account Name” by Apple); it was created for you initially, and in this example would be something like johnsmith. To see what yours is, right-click on a folder you own, do Get Info, and see what the permissions box at the bottom contains representing “me” (you!).
• Know how to create a network on your Mac. In this procedure, when you select the Panasonic option the Panasonic will display the IDs for itself, and you will type them into the Mac. The ID is called an SSID.
• Set your Work Group to “WORKGROUP.” Wait—what? This is some magic Windows networking stuff, not even known to that many Windows users these days. System Preferences>Network>Advanced… tab>Click on the WINS button to see the WINS settings. Take note of the name of your computer (“NetBIOS Name”), which you will have to enter manually on the GX-7. Equally important: Be sure the Workgroup field contains the exact word WORKGROUP.
• In this example:
o Shared Folder “GX-7 Pictures”
o Short name “johnsmith”
o John’s (who must be an administrator of the Mac) password: gx7geek
o Computer name (NetBIOS Name): johnsmac
o Workgroup WORKGROUP
Procedure
This procedure creates a Wi-Fi connection between the Mac and the camera, for a designated purpose, such as sending pictures to the Mac as you take them or—this is considered different!—sending them later, as a group. For those two cases you would need two different connections.
Fortunately, once you have a successful, working connection, you can save it (“register” it) as a favorite, so you can use the connection next time.
1. Push the Wi-Fi button on the back of the GX-7.
2. Select New Connection.
3. Select function: I am choosing “Send Images While Recording.”
4. Select the destination: PC (I know—it’s a Mac, but just deal with it).
5. Select connection method: Choose “Direct”
6. A second panel comes up asking you to choose the “Wi-Fi Direct device.” Choose Manual Connection.
7. The camera displays an SSID like “GX7-027332” and a password (network key) like a1c994c027332. You’re camera is now like a little network router + server, and this provides the IDs—you are going to log into this camera-network.
a. On the Mac, click on the Wi-Fi icon.
b. Click “Join Other Network” and type in the SSID and password information. To type the “password” (key), choose the WEP security type, and type in the key value. (Check the “Show Password” box to make it easier on yourself.)
8. You will now look at the hour-glass search thing… for a long time! Be patient. You’ll have time for a quick bathroom break. After some minutes it will time out and ask you for the name of the computer (johnsmac, in our example):
a. When it times out it will give you the choice Manual Input. Select that.
b. Enter the name johnsmac. (I do not believe this name is case-sensitive.)
9. You should fairly quickly get a dialog asking for your username and password for the Mac! In our example, they are "johnsmith" and "gx7geek." Enter these in the correct case.
10. You should now see a dialog showing the shared folder on your Mac, in my example, “GX-7 Pictures.” Select that folder.
11. Try it out! The blue LED will blink when the camera is transmitting.
12. When you are satisfied that things are working save this connection for later use!
a. Push the Wi-Fi button again to bring up the dialog (it probably is titled “Send Images While Recording”).
b. Scroll down and select “Register the Current Destination to Favorite.”
The procedure is similar when you set up a connection for sending a batch of pictures after you take them. (That’s probably the more common use case, at least for me.) Notes about sending pictures as a batch:
• I don’t think there’s a way to say “send all the pictures on this card.” You can either select one or do a “multi-select,” which requires you to select them all one-by-one. It’s rather laborious, but it works.
• My GX-7, after I select multiple images, gives me a scary-looking message saying it is going to take 20 minutes or something to do the transfer. This is just some Panasonic bug. In reality it may take a minute or so.
• My camera always seems to revert to JPG as the format for sending images. If you want to send RAW or both, you can change that before you do the transfer:
o Push the Wi-Fi button on the camera to bring up a dialog titled “Send Images Stored in the Camera,” the first item of which is “Terminate the Connection.” (That’s what you do to break the connection with the computer, when you’re all done for the time being.)
o On this dialog, scroll down and select “Change Settings Stored in the Camera.” Choose your poison there.
Good luck. I'm sure people will post questions or clarifications here.
Tom
jesse1dog
Light Catcher
I can appreciate the amount of time and effort that you have put into this - thanks for sharing but I'll continue to download directly using a card reader. I have to keep things simple there days! LOL
Bill Clark
Veteran
What I do is when the folder is recognized by showing up up on my Mac desktop after either my card reader with the card installed or from my camera, I move the folder, after clicking it on from the desktop, to an external hard drive. Like John, I most always use a card reader.
Haven't used Wi-Fi for this. Interesting. My question that my brain asked me is "how fast?" Does it tie up the camera whil transferring? How much power is used? I shoot using RAW only, fairly large each image file size.
Haven't used Wi-Fi for this. Interesting. My question that my brain asked me is "how fast?" Does it tie up the camera whil transferring? How much power is used? I shoot using RAW only, fairly large each image file size.
sdotkling
Sent through the ether
I congratulate you for your persistence. I spent an hour figuring out how to control the camera shutter through my iPhone (pretty cool after I got it set up) but I think for file transfer, I'll stick to my USB cable plugged into the micro-USB port under the little plastic door on the camera body.
Tom Diaz
Well-known
Actually, I might also use the USB cable most of the time. However, I wanted to get this working because it seems like there will be some point where I find myself with the camera and the Mac but without the cable.
Anyway, if anyone is struggling with this and the above post is not enough, feel free to PM me.
TD
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Most of the current Apple systems have SD/SDHC/SDXC card readers built-in, the only ones that don't are the MacBook Air 11" models (no room for it). In which case, you don't need either the cable or the camera to be powered up ... Just stick the card into the slot on the computer and copy the files to whereever you want them to be.
While I do understand wanting to get the wireless option working, and kudos for figuring it out, it seems an awful lot of effort for little gain. Moving image files directly from card to computer with the built-in reader will not impact battery life of the camera, etc.
G
Tom Diaz
Well-known
Bill, I haven't tested the speed really. It takes less than a minute for 10 or so Raw+JPEG files. I don't think it ties the camera up completely (since one of the features is "send pictures to the Mac while you're shooting"). However, as with the USB cable alternative, I am personally not likely to want to hang around within Wi-Fi range of my Mac while I shoot pictures.
Based on experience with laptops and phones, I also would think the Wi-Fi is a bit of a battery hog, so fortunately the transfer takes only a few minutes.
Again, for me this whole thing—in addition to my just obsessively wanting to solve the problem—is to provide an alternative to taking the camera out of its case every time I want to get a picture off of it. As you may know, the GX7's USB terminal is not accessible when the half-case is on. Once I have to take off the case, my first instinct would be just to switch out the card and read the images with a card reader.
TD
Bill Clark
Veteran
Thanks Tom.
Tom Diaz
Well-known
Well, my 2008 Macbook Pro does not have a built-in card reader, and, ... and—how shall I put this?—I solved the problem. That's what really matters. Don't you see?
I too will usually use a card reader, I suppose.
TD
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Harmen86
Newbie
Thanks for this extensive description Tom. I just keep experiencing two issues in step 9:
1. My password contains 10 characters, but on the screen I consistently see just 8 asterics (********). Changing my password makes no difference.
2. After typing username and password, I can only press 'exit', instead of something like 'ok' or 'next'. Strange, but perhaps not a problem.
Whatever variations I try, it keeps telling me 'username or password are incorrect. Try again.'
Any idea what might go wrong? Much appreciated!
1. My password contains 10 characters, but on the screen I consistently see just 8 asterics (********). Changing my password makes no difference.
2. After typing username and password, I can only press 'exit', instead of something like 'ok' or 'next'. Strange, but perhaps not a problem.
Whatever variations I try, it keeps telling me 'username or password are incorrect. Try again.'
Any idea what might go wrong? Much appreciated!
photomoof
Fischli & Weiss Sculpture
How shall I put this, not really what I would call a solution.
A better solution would to be to purchase a card reader.
But if you were being held at ray-gunpoint, in some dystopian future where all the card readers were gone, and the aliens were about to kill you, it would be a solution.
BTy
Newbie
GX-7 wifi -- thank you
GX-7 wifi -- thank you
Dear Tom Diaz,
I had all but given up even making sense of my GX-7's wifi feature.
Your instructions are concise and complete and set me up so I now may
use wifi as I teach a course this fall. All terrific, thank you.
The snark (sour grapes, but why?) I also see here dismays me. Why
cavil? The darned thing works. And how! A real kick to take a shot and
see it, just there on the big screen, moments later.
Bob Tyson
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Brescia
GX-7 wifi -- thank you
Dear Tom Diaz,
I had all but given up even making sense of my GX-7's wifi feature.
Your instructions are concise and complete and set me up so I now may
use wifi as I teach a course this fall. All terrific, thank you.
The snark (sour grapes, but why?) I also see here dismays me. Why
cavil? The darned thing works. And how! A real kick to take a shot and
see it, just there on the big screen, moments later.
Bob Tyson
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Brescia
xvvvz
Established
I know this thread is about the Panasonic GX7 and the Mac but Windows users like me who struggled with trying to figure out the connection workflow for Windows 7, 8 and 10 will probably end up here on this thread at some point via web searches. For those people, here is a link to a thread that finally gave me enough of a clue to figure out how to get things working with the GX7 and Windows:
https://www.mu-43.com/threads/51754/
Now back to our regularly scheduled program about Macs...
Doug
https://www.mu-43.com/threads/51754/
Now back to our regularly scheduled program about Macs...
Doug