all photo programs crash when clicking on import

[John F McEnroe]

Using Ubuntu 9.04 attempting to import photos causes digiKam, f-spot,
gthumb and GtKam to crash or fail to open.

Because if the universal nature of the crashing, I am assuming the
problem may lie with libgphoto2 and gphoto. Initially I had problems,
but I made it worse by attempting to install a version not in the Ubuntu
repositories.

A week of cruising lists and attempting to solve the problem indicates
that I do not know the correct questions to ask.

Is there a way of finding a solution to successfully importing photos in
Ubuntu 9.04?

John McEnroe
Portland, Oregon