Camera question - need answer fairly quickly

Factual Questions
1

My wife bought a Nikon Coolpix 8800 digital camera in the early 2000s. So far it’s been a great purchase, until now. It has to be connected to a PC by cable and requires Nikon “Picture Project” software to download any imagery. However, now that we have Windows 10, “Picture Project” is incompatible and Nikon no longer supports it.

Has anyone else out there experienced this and found a solution or is the perfectly functional SLR camera that we really like now unusable for no particularly good reason?

Thanks

2

See if you have the option of “compatibility mode.” If you don’t, or that doesn’t work (it’ll probably be a 32-bit vs. 64-bit problem), then see if your hard drive has space for a WIN8 (or 7, or XP, or whatever worked best for the camera) partition. Install that OS on the partition, and run the camera program on the partition.

3

OP -
The Nikon Coolpix 8800 absolutely does NOT require anything you have mentioned.
Just get a CF card reader, and use it to mount the card on your computer. Then, any image cataloging software will work. I used iPhoto on OS X with the Nikon 5700 (an earlier version of this camera) for many years.

4

We’ve been using this camera less and less (seduced by our smaller, newer Nikon) but we’re going on a trip and it never occurred to us until now, when we’ve been testing things.

Methinks I’ll be buying a card reader as you’ve suggested.

5

You probably don’t even need a card reader? Did you try plugging it in with your existing cable and just opening up the drive in My Computer or with the Windows “Photos” app?

6

I always go into the camera as a media storage unit through “Computer” and go into the DCIM folder and copy/paste.

7

A card reader will usually be much faster than a direct USB connection to the camera, especially cameras of earlier vintage. We only use a direct connection to our Nikon D300 when we forget to bring the card reader. They are also pretty cheap…

8

If your computer is a desktop type, you may already have a CF reader slot built in.

9

Yes, if you don’t want to get a card reader (which I would highly recommend), you can connect the camera directly to the computer and it will show up as a hard drive. You need to make sure that Mass Storage is selected as the USB setting in the camera’s set-up menu, and not PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol), but Mass Storage is the default setting on the D8800, according to the manual I just checked.

10

I have a similar Coolpix (the 6000), and I just pop the memory card out and stick it in the card slot of my laptop. Fastest solution I know of.

11

If you have a multi-function printer, it might have a card slot, my Epson does.

Also, most laptop do.

12

It uses the large, older type 1 and 2 CF cards.

Older PCs and laptops may have this slot but most recent ones will not have a slot for this larger card. A card reader is your best bet.