[Techtalk] mounting a USB camera

[Hamster]

Hi,

I have a USB camera which I am trying to mount under linux. It's a bit of a
story, so let me explain.

It's my understanding that there are two ways of accessing a digi camera.
The first way is using the programme gphoto2. 

Using gphoto2, everything works. I can download images, so I know at least
the camera works in some capacity.

But what I really want to be able to do is to access it the second way.
This by mounting the camera and accessing the images via the regular file
system- ie not using the gphoto2 application at all. I understand it uses
scsi emulation to access the compactflash card as a vfat partition.

Here's the problem that's got me absolutely stumped. I have found
approximately 50,475,478,356,232,968,447,358 documents that outline the
following procedure:

modprobe sd_mod
modprobe usb-storage

switch camera on

mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt

The problem is that on my system, the /dev/sd* devices are not created.

I'm guessing the solution to my problem might lie in finding out what's
responsible for creating the /dev/sd* files?

Does anyone have any clue how I can get it to work?

Thanks, 

Hamster

For the record:
Mandrake 9.2 kernel 2.4.22-10mdk
Camera is Canon Powershot G1

/proc/bus/usb/devices lists the camera as being present
(excerpt follows)
T:  Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#= 11 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff MxPS=32 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=04a9 ProdID=3048 Rev= 0.01
S:  Manufacturer=Canon Inc.
S:  Product=PowerShot G1
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=100mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=(none)
E:  Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=83(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS=  64 Ivl=96ms

lsmod (abridged)
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
usb-storage            91616   0  (unused)
sg                     35068   0  (autoclean)
sd_mod                 13804   0  (unused)
sr_mod                 19384   0  (autoclean)
hid                    24164   0  (unused)
vfat                   11820   1  (autoclean)
fat                    38040   0  (autoclean) [vfat]
supermount             84032   3  (autoclean)
ide-cd                 33956   0
cdrom                  32608   0  [sr_mod ide-cd]
ide-scsi               11376   0
scsi_mod              106176   4  [usb-storage sg sd_mod sr_mod ide-scsi]
ehci-hcd               19212   0  (unused)
usb-ohci               21080   0  (unused)
usbcore                74988   1  [usb-storage hid ehci-hcd usb-ohci]