digital camera doesn't show up in Finder

Most digital cameras (including Nikon) are not devices that show up in the Finder. (If you want to complain, complain to Nikon. Older Nikons had an option in the menus to set the camera as a "mass storage" device. Newer cameras do not have this feature.)

Use Image Capture. You can preview the images and download them (or not). You can also access some camera options, synchronize the camera's clock with your Mac, or operate the camera in tethered mode. Or you can set another application to launch whenever that specific camera is attached.

Hi Kali

We are clearly in the "how to work around Apple's design decisions" category.

The USB protocol uses so-called profiles to ease device interoperability. See: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/devclass_docs/

Apple apparently decided not to show the profile used by Nikon's camera's (and probably a lot other manufacturers' cameras) in the finder. iPhoto shows up instead. They may either rely on the profile, or on another criteria to detect it is a camera. Whatever the technical mean, it is a design decision made by Apple.

I tried to drag-and-drop photos from iPhoto (prior to iPhoto import, directly from the Camera) to a folder of my choosing. That did not work.

A good-enough work-around:

I then tried to drag-and-drop photos from Apples' Image capture software. It worked 🙂. Even better, "Image capture" shows photo attributes such as aperture, focal length, etc. Next question: how to make Image capture start automagically when I plug my camera over USB?

I use both Windows and Mac platforms, and that's clearly the kind of things that make Windows aficionados frustrated. To some extent, it is counter-productive, it speaks against Mac OS. But hey, Apple must be doing something right: the company's balance sheet speaks for itself !

The first solution about Finder preferences was close, what I found worked was going to the "Sidebar" tab, and there, there is another "external drives" check box. It was not selected for me after upgrading to Yosemite from Mavericks (my cameras were showing up in Mavericks before the upgrade).

After selecting that, it started showing up in Finder (sidebar) again.

I have a d5000 and my computer would not detect the camera at all. with updates ,software , firmware on and on ....... the only fix ,witch is simple , was for me to buy a multiport USB hub and plug my camera into that. There was no detection problem after that at all.I have no idea why it would not read direct and neither did the genius bar @ apple. This is a cheap easy way around an unsolvable detection issue. Hope this helps anyone out there with the same problem.

In case this helps anyone else, I never realized my Macbook Pro Retina has an SD card reader built into the side. So, if you happen to have the same kind of set up then you don't need to connect directly to your camera. I had no idea laptops had this, and none of the forums I checked mentioned this as a possible (and incredibly simple) solution. Hopefully some of the folks checking here can benefit from this!

Try using image capture in your applications, this allows you to save to any folder/external drive. It would be helpful to have the camera show up on the desk top like any external drive but mine isn't doing it right now either. I feel like it has in past versions of my OS but maybe that was just a card reader... running 10.6.8 right now.

(1) Make sure external disks are set to appear on the desktop in Finder's prefs.

(2) Read "To manually download photos" in

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2498>

This has been a nuisance for me as well. So glad to finally have a solution. Thanks for the link fane_j ...

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2498>

It would be much easier to have my camera open directly in Finder but at least Image Capture should do the trick for now. Thanks again!

Your camera may not show up in Finder. iPhoto and Aperture preferences have the option of opening when the camera is connected. That is what I use. You may try that.

Ciao.

There's got to be a trick to mounting the camera. My Canon 50D showed up as an external HD on my friend's new iMac running Lion when we were in South Africa, and it shows up on my Windows 7 laptop. But on my mid-2011 21" iMac running Lion 10.7.3 it won't show up as an external HD or anything else, and I have to access it with iPhoto, or Graphic Converter, or Canon's proprietary software.

Someone out there know the answer?

I wasn't able to get the Camera to show up in the Finder. However, I was able to use iPhoto, ImageCapture and Dropbox. I find iPhoto the best option as I can browse the camera photos and delete them from the SD card before importing them.

I need to upgrade my firmware for D7000 however when SD in card reader Image Capture doesn't recognise it either - only when actual camera attached? What can I do to update please.

Normally I load my images via Preview into folder of my choice before editing in Adobe LR etc.

Very true, it's unbelievable.

So now we have the plug and play feature removed, iTunes removing your personal data without consent (possibly the best feature ever) and the good old planned obsolescence reaching levels of absurdity.

Way to go Apple!