I updated the firmware of my digital SLR camera Canon EOS 400D to the newest version 1.1.1 and now I can download the images from the directly connected camera with Digikam 0.9.2. This is possible because Canon added support for the new Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) USB protocol. Before, only the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) was available which was not well supported under the Linux/Digikam combination.