Digikam slow to scan camera (regression)

What is painfully slow? 2, 5, or 10 times slower?

Is your camera seen by Linux as USB Mass Storage device (that you can mount as filesystem)? Or do you need to use gphoto2 to access the camera? Can you provide output of the following commands (when camera is attached):
- df
- lsusb
- gphoto2 --auto-detect

Can you use "kdebugdialog" to enable digikam debugs and then run
"digikam" from terminal (Konsole) and attach the messages printed during slow download?

It's 10 times slower, easily, when scanning the camera for images. I plug in the camera, digikam pops up, opens the camera import dialog, and then just sits there for 20 seconds before even rendering thumbnails. Each thumbnail from that point on takes maybe 1s to render. Previously, this was extremely fast.

lsusb:

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 04a9:30f0 Canon, Inc. PowerShot S2 IS (PTP mode)
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:c408 Logitech, Inc. Marble Mouse (4-button)
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:6254 Alcor Micro Corp. USB Hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05e3:0716 Genesys Logic, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0a12:1004 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04f2:0402 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

df:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 11535344 8298516 2650860 76% /
udev 1806732 352 1806380 1% /dev
none 1806732 4860 1801872 1% /dev/shm
none 1806732 212 1806520 1% /var/run
none 1806732 0 1806732 0% /var/lock
none 1806732 0 1806732 0% /lib/init/rw
none 11535344 8298516 2650860 76% /var/lib/ureadahead/debugfs
/dev/sdd1 484535504 443298804 16817500 97% /m3
/dev/sdc1 969063944 969063408 0 100% /backup
/dev/sdb1 14421344 290332 13398452 3% /tmp
/dev/sdb2 19380708 15842904 2561052 87% /docs
/dev/sda2 19228308 12400220 5851336 68% /home
/dev/sdb4 446745948 403400116 20831140 96% /m2
/dev/sda3 930669180 416021412 467372492 48% /m1
/dev/sr0 4147076 4147076 0 100% /media/cdrom0

gphoto2:
Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
Canon PowerShot S2 IS (PTP mode) usb:
Canon PowerShot S2 IS (PTP mode) usb:001,007

I had to install gphoto2; it wasn't present before.

I can't do the test of running digikam from the command line, as it fails to recognize the camera. It only works when I plug the camera in.

digikam(3646)/digikam (core) Digikam::GPCamera::doConnect: Failed to initialize camera!
digikam(3646)/digikam (core) Digikam::GPCamera::printGphotoErrorDescription: Libgphoto2 error: Could not lock the device ( -60 )

I'm having a similar issue with Digikam with the current version of exiv. It seems the exif rotate portion takes an eternity, and I have a feeling that it is this bug:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=579835

Please update these packages ASAP, it's unbearable in the current state.

I also forgot to add I'm using a Nikon D90. I tried updating specifically libexiv with a Maverick package and it didn't help, I think libkexiv needs to be updated too (and this is a much more involved process as it has several forward and reverse depedencies). Help!

Here is the upstream bug:
http://dev.exiv2.org/issues/show/677

I believe it has been fixed in newer versions of exiv2. I tried to do the "also effects" on launchpad, but launchpad doesn't have a project for exiv2 (only gexiv).

At closer inspection this appears to be a separate bug. I'll file a different bug report.