Organizing / Naming Photos if using 2 Cameras?

[dbaldock]

So, now I've got a pair of Nikon DSLR cameras - one D90, and one D7000. My 10-24mm is on the D90, and the 28-300mm is on the D7000. When visiting the San Jacinto Monument and Battleship Texas on Sunday afternoon, I was alternately shooting with both cameras. Since the D7000 is new, it's photo numbers are very low, and the D90's are much higher, so the photos "sort" with all of the D7K files before the D90 files.

What's a good scheme or technique to Name the photos from the pair of cameras, so that they display in chronological order on a PC?

I could write a script that uses exiftool to extract the CreateDate, and then use that as a prefix to rename each file, but is this the best way to do the task?


Thanks,
David Baldock

[Rson]

Use LR and have it label both cameras.

That way you can tell

[Rson]

You can also set the File name prefix in the camera menu. IE. instead of DSC, you can make one D90 and the other D70.

[dbaldock]

Thanks for the suggestions. Currently I'm using DxO Optics Pro to process my NEF files into TIF files. And then I use some command line scripts to Watermark the files and convert them into PNG files (with 20MB max size) to upload to Flickr. I upload PNG's to Flickr because Flickr accepts PNG's without converting them to a lossy compressed JPG, which is what happens if you upload a TIF.

The D7000 has been set to use D7K as the file name prefix.

And, I just went through the entire Menu structure on the D90, and didn't see where the file name prefix could be changed. Which Menu / Sub-Menu should I be looking for?

Modifying the file name prefix on each camera won't get me to my goal though. If I shoot the first couple of shots at a location with the D90, and then shoot some with the D7K, I still end up with the files normally sorted like this -

D7K_0023
D7K_0024
D90_2300
D90_2301

- which is not chronological. In the PC file browser I can select Sort-by-Date, but the normal way of sorting directories is alphabetically by name. That's why I think the CreateDate (modified to this format "2011-08-14_132408") added as a prefix to the file names would be the most direct way to get what I want.

Thanks again,
David Baldock

[d2creative]

I use nikon and leica so they end up in lightroom in the order i took them regardless of which camera was used and since they have different prefixes and numbering systems I can tell which is which. I also rename all files like you have it except for me its [date]_[shootname]_[filename].

[MT Stringer]

I use the Canon EOS Utility to sync the clock on both of my cameras. It has an option to sync with the computer. The 1D MK III has the option to set up a custom file naming convention, so I use MTH_0001. But the 7D doesn't have that so I am stuck with IMG_0001.

I always reset my counters to zero before every event. Images imported into Lightroom are sorted by "Capture time". Sometimes the images don't align properly because shooting at 10 frames per second results in 4-5 images with the same time stamp. That's OK by me.

Note: Resetting my counter ensures me that it won't accidentally roll over when I am not aware and start a new count in another folder. That has happened a couple of times when someone else was shooting for me at a tournament and it was quiet confusing until I finally figured out what had happened.

[andyz]

I manually sync the clock on the two cameras, (its close but not exact) and in Bridge sort by time and date. Works well.

[Tom]

I rename all files from an event without regards to what camera it was shot by.

[dmcantrell]

I rename all my files in Abode Bridge as they are imported to my PC using this scheme:

YYYYMMDD_NNNN.nef

In this way, you can sort the files by "Name" and end up with Chronological sort (down to the day at least). You might even be able to create a rule to add the HHMMSS onto the name as well.

[ggeen]

I dump all my photos in the same directory for an event. The prefix for my D700 is GG7_xxxx and for my D200 the prefix is GG2_xxxx.

My directory naming is /Users/geen/Pictures/CCYY/CCYYMMDDeventname.

CC = century
YY = year
MM = month
DD =day
event name, you can probably guess.

[Patti Edens]

Originally Posted by ggeen

I dump all my photos in the same directory for an event. The prefix for my D700 is GG7_xxxx and for my D200 the prefix is GG2_xxxx.

My directory naming is /Users/geen/Pictures/CCYY/CCYYMMDDeventname.

CC = century
YY = year
MM = month
DD =day
event name, you can probably guess.

This is the 21st Century. So, if you took a photo today, the 17th of August, 2011, you would label that photo ...

21110817event

? Am I missing something?

[auddii]

Originally Posted by Patti Edens

This is the 21st Century. So, if you took a photo today, the 17th of August, 2011, you would label that photo ...

21110817event

? Am I missing something?

I think it's year, month, day. I always use this naming convention because unless you have taken pictures for over a century, they will always be in order. In this naming convention, today would be 110817.

Edit: I actually leave the file names as named by my camera, but I put them in folders named YYMMDD_Event name.

[ggeen]

Originally Posted by Patti Edens

This is the 21st Century. So, if you took a photo today, the 17th of August, 2011, you would label that photo ...

21110817event

? Am I missing something?

No, you are just not a programmer, we number from zero. So Century is 20, It is the eleventh year so it is 11. We did not get to number the months and days so those being at one.

The directory name is 20110817eventname/GG7_xxxx || GG2_xxxx

[Dobick]

I tend to rename my files to whatever the event is plus original number. I use LR and sort by time captured. I never reset my counters. With two cameras you run the risk of having a crap load of files called IMG-0001 for the same event as soon as you put in a new card. I would rather only deal with the rollover every 10000 images vs every new card

I know this doesn't really address the original question.

For that you can always sort them chron and then use dxo to rename them sequentially

[auddii]

So is there a 0 BC and a 0 AD? I never figured out how that transition works.