Organizing photos from more than one camera body

[RichardT]

I was wondering what is the best way to do this? I use lightroom with its auto import feature and was wondering what is the best way to name files/organize them. Here are the two methods I have in mind

- Append the name of the camera body to the file name
- Separate the files from each body into their own folders with their own file structure

In both methods I'll be using meta data to create smart collections so the files will be combined from both bodies into the correct shoot.

Does anyone else have a better solution or a different one? I'd like to hear what other people are doing.

[fletch]

Tags? Could you not just label every photo with the camera it was taken with. I don't use lightroom so I'm not sure of the correct terminology but seems it would be fairly easy.

You can also sort by 'Camera Model' in Windows Explorer

[jdepould]

Why does it matter? If you really want them separated, I'd say use the model in the title, otherwise just do it however you normally would. If you need to search by camera, you can do that in the library filters.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by RichardT

Here are the two methods I have in mind

- Append the name of the camera body to the file name
- Separate the files from each body into their own folders with their own file structure

Neither.

Folder names and file names are not for telling you anything about the image. Folders are for workflow purposes—which folder an image file is in depends on which stage of the workflow it's in. File names are simply permanent identifiers.

It certainly can be useful to use some kind of camera indicator within the file name, in order to prevent conflicts between otherwise identical file names from the various cameras. But file names are not how you locate images with any particular attributes. That's what tags, keywords, and/or catalog entries are for (depending on the DAM system in use—I'm not familiar with the details of Lightroom).

[sk66]

You don't need to do anything. Besides, it will only complicate things.

With Lightroom you can filter images by camera (or lens/focal length/iso...pretty much anything) which the program gets from the image metadata.

[Jim Bryant]

Seems like too much work. I put them in a file folder. For example: who I shot for, the assignment name and date. UPI-Angels vs. Mariners 05/27/09 (file folder name) then images UPI Angles vs. Marines 001-998. I then put the folder name, date shot, who for in a master catalog and assign a number such as 068 - 05/27/09 - UPI - Angles vs. Mariners. Next assignment would be 069 and so forth. Starting at 001 means an assignment shot on the first month of the year, starting in January and I might end up with a number of 285 shot on 31 December. Anyways....that system work for me. Everyone had a different method of sorting images.

[RichardT]

Thanks for the input. The thing I'm trying to avoid is conflicting file names. Does lightroom handle file name conflicts automatticaly?

[m.c.adams]

The meta data will have the camera name in it and I believe that you could separate that way.
Mark

[sk66]

Originally Posted by RichardT

Thanks for the input. The thing I'm trying to avoid is conflicting file names. Does lightroom handle file name conflicts automatticaly?

I believe so. My cameras are all different brands so they have different extensions.
With my D300 I can set it to give a prefix to the file.

[jdepould]

Originally Posted by RichardT

Thanks for the input. The thing I'm trying to avoid is conflicting file names. Does lightroom handle file name conflicts automatticaly?

Yeah, if it encounters a filename that's already being used, it just adds -1, -2, -3 whatever.