Comment 30 for bug 285682

More info. When I plug the camera in and I am logged into gnome, the camera does not work. Gnome offers to open the camera, and sometimes the folder view shows the top-level DCIM directory, but it hangs when I try to look inside that directory. I attach a screenshot of the problem (with a tail of /var/log/messages behind).
I notice that the camera does NOT show up in fdisk.

However, if I kill GDM and work in text consoles, when I turn the camera on it DOES show up in fdisk as /dev/sdb1. I am then able to mount it, launch startx and browse the camera in nautilus. This demonstrates to me that the problem is not in the kernel USB handling but is misconfiguration of whatever auto-mounts the camera filesystem. Tailing /var/log/messages, these following messages occur that don't occur when a gnome user is logged in:

Nov 28 01:18:37 StevesPC kernel: [ 444.138675] scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.148557] scsi 7:0:0:0: Direct-Access PENTAX PENTAX OPTIO 550 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.163535] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 4022272 512-byte hardware sectors (2059 MB)
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.181116] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.199543] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] 4022272 512-byte hardware sectors (2059 MB)
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.206534] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.211476] sdb: sdb1
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.229683] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
Nov 28 01:18:42 StevesPC kernel: [ 449.230274] sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

I read in another bug report that gphoto2 was being excluded from Hardy, and I notice that in my screenshot, the non-functional URL is a gphoto2 URL, so I am guessing that this is where the problem lies and it is suppressing the normal mass storage SCSI emulation.