Import photos from Canon cameras not working in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite
I spent all of my beautiful Saturday afternoon trying to find a way to import photos from my Canon EOS Digital Rebel to my iMac mid-2011 that I recently upgraded to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, only to find out that, according to Apple Support Chat, Canon no longer provides driver or software support for photo transfer from Canon cameras to Apple iMacs under Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I was told by Apple verbatim, "This is a Canon problem and you will just have to wait until Canon comes out with drivers and photo transfer software that works with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite." Even though prior to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Apple photo software (iPhoto, Image Capture, Aperture) and Adobe software (Lightroom 5) imported photos just fine from my Canon camera.
Now, as a part-time professional photographer, I know there are a lot of professional photographers out there who own Macs and Canon cameras. A whole lot. And for Apple's position to be "Hey, this is a Canon problem and you will just have to put your business and livelihood on hold because Canon needs to fix it" is well, a little callous to say the least. My response to the end of that Apple Support Chat was "You know I used to be able to upgrade my iMac to the latest Mac OS X release and not have to worry about compatibility issues. It just worked. Now it just doesn't." To which the Apple Support Chat response was "Have a nice day". I am not kidding.
Fortunately though, Canon technical support provided a workaround that Apple should also be aware of, but apparently isn't. Or else, if it is, it is not sharing that information with people who have active AppleCare Support agreements, which I do have. Apparently even the oldest Canon DSLR camera, which I happen to own, a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (the original), supports the Picture Transfer Protocol driver which is built into all Macs, even the ones with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Canon technical support told me that all I needed to do was make a simple change on the camera settings. Change the Communication method from "Normal" to "PTP". That's it. When I did that, Image Capture was then able to see and transfer my photos. Although it still would not display the thumbnail previews for images captured in RAW format on my camera with the PTP communications setting, it did transfer those images in RAW format correctly to my iMac hard drive where I could then view them in Finder and Preview, and more importantly import them to iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom 5 for editing.
So I am posting this not to ask a "How to solve this question", but in the hopes that someone else who is experiencing a similar problem will not have to spend an entire sunny Saturday afternoon in early November (a rare occurrence in the Pacific Northwest) trying in vain to export photos from their Canon camera that are critical for their business to their Apple iMac running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, which is also critical for their business, only to have Apple Chat Support tell them that they just have to wait until drivers are provided by Canon, when every Mac has a built-in driver that is compatible with all Canon DSLR cameras. Too bad Apple does not share this information with their Support personnel. Fortunately Canon does.
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10), Safari 8.0