How to fix raspistill ERROR: the system should be configured for the legacy camera stack

Problem:

While trying to capture an image using raspistill, you see the following error message

ERROR: the system should be configured for the legacy camera stack

and no image is being produced

Solution 1 (recommended): Use libcamera

Recent versions of Raspbian use libcamera instead of the broadcom legacy camera API. You can capture an image using libcamera-still similarly to raspistill:

libcamera-still -o test.jpg

Solution 2: Enable legacy camera API

If you absolutely need raspistill specifically to work, you can still enable the legacy camera API using rpi-config:

sudo raspi-config

Go to:

• 3 Interface Config
• I1 Legacy Camera

and choose Yes to enable the legacy camera API.