Wedding Photographers - Dealing with images from multiple cameras

mr tommo · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:05

At a typical wedding we use 4 cameras. Now I've taken over as main photographer its down to me to organise all the files from the cameras.

Obviously this can be a bit of a nightmare. I know I can view files by time and then rename them in this sequence. That's fine apart from if I have duplicate IMGxxxx then I cant put them all in the same file/catalog to rename them in sequence.

Kind of struggling to come up with an answer. One of our bodies is a 1ds mkiii so I can choose to have it files to be 2LOBxxxx.

Just wondering how you guys get around this problem of having the same file names from different cameras.

At the last wedding I reset the sequence on one of the cameras and that meant that it worked out ok.

Raymond Lin · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:09

Root directory - RAW - camera 1/ camera 2 / camera 3 / camera 4.

In each camera folder you can break it down 01, 02, 03 (1 for each card).

Then in Lightroom, point the program to import from folder, point it to the RAW folder.

Schizophonic · 27 Sep 2012 at 14:29

I hope all the date / time was set correctly in the camera.

Copy the RAW on to associated folder as Raymond mentions. Lightroom will pick up all the files associated in that folder when you begin choosing the keepers it would organise the files of when the photo was taken (down to the exact second)

mr tommo · 27 Sep 2012 at 15:07

Cheers guys, yeah I've synced all the camera date & time.

So if theres 2 files:
Camera 1 > Card 1> IMG 0001
and another file in Camera 4 > Card 1> IMG 0001

Are you saying that once imported that lightroom will be able to deal with them in the same catalog as the roots of the files will be different? If so thats fantastic.

Do you guys bother renaming for clients?

Really need to come up with some sort of set workflow for next weeks wedding.

Raymond Lin · 27 Sep 2012 at 15:30

It'll work, make sure you tick includes sub folders.

Schizophonic · 27 Sep 2012 at 15:33

Watch this as this helped get me going in organising my folders.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/getting-s...troom-4-importing-and-organizing-your-images/

Nexus · 27 Sep 2012 at 16:11

Although I'm not a wedding photographer, I'd certainly make sure I name the filenames according to which camera they are, i.e.:

C1_0001.jpg or something.

I do it with the two bodies I use so I can quickly see which camera it is, like so:

5D3_0001.jpg
7D_0001.jpg

D.P. · 27 Sep 2012 at 17:14

mr tommo said:
Cheers guys, yeah I've synced all the camera date & time.

So if theres 2 files:
Camera 1 > Card 1> IMG 0001
and another file in Camera 4 > Card 1> IMG 0001

Are you saying that once imported that lightroom will be able to deal with them in the same catalog as the roots of the files will be different? If so thats fantastic.

Do you guys bother renaming for clients?

Really need to come up with some sort of set workflow for next weeks wedding.

You can quickly test. Make a small folder of RAW photos, copy the folder to make a duplication. Import both folder into lightroom and see how LR handles duplicate image names (including duplicate timestamps) . I cannot possibly foresee any reason why there could be any problem. The images will be referenced in memory by a unique reference number, file name and location are merely associated variables with those objects.

mr tommo · 27 Sep 2012 at 22:47

Ok thanks all, will test it tomorrow.

Also thanks for the link too ill have a read a work in the morning

jprother · 28 Sep 2012 at 13:11

i name the files according to camera (set in camera), so the file names are always different. And always sync the clocks just before the wedding. Edit the files, delete as req then batch rename them.