Sort feature doesn't always work

MT Stringer

I have been having trouble sorting the images in my gallery when I upload pictures to it. I create a new gallery and I have Auto Sort set to "By Date taken" and Sort Order is set to Ascending (1-99)

I have the date and time synchronized on both of my camera bodies. The filenames will be different but do sort OK.

Most of the pics will sort properly but every now and then , several images will be jumbled (455, 452, 456, etc). That's where the problem lies. I haven't been able to figure out what is wrong, or not being done properly on my part.

Here's a link to the latest game photos. There are numerous images out of place that I will have to manually arrange. Specific examples include MTH_0452 thru MTH_0455. They are jumbled.

http://mtstringer.smugmug.com/gallery/8657868_XRQen#571538840_xFNS8

Help!

EDIT: I may have found the answer. The pics that are jumbled all have the same time stamp. So a burst of 5-6 images will all have the same time stamp.
I guess manual arrange it is then.
Thanks
Mike

MT Stringer

I tried to manually arrange the photos but they were all mixed up so I re-sorted them by date and time taken. Overall, they look pretty good except for the sequential burst shots.
Mike

jfriend

MT Stringer wrote:

I tried to manually arrange the photos but they were all mixed up so I re-sorted them by date and time taken. Overall, they look pretty good except for the sequential burst shots.
Mike

When this happens to me, I sort by filename because the filenames out of the camera are in true sequential order.

MT Stringer

jfriend wrote:

When this happens to me, I sort by filename because the filenames out of the camera are in true sequential order.

Thanks John, but I'm combining files from two different cameras with different naming conventions. One starts with MTH_0001 and the other Img_0001. Both cameras are synced with the time and date.

The problem seems to be a burst of images. Exif shows the same date stamp for all four or 5 images. When they upload, they get jumbled up.

Mike

Allen

They need to include the seconds in the time sort string.

MT Stringer

Allen wrote:

They need to include the seconds in the time sort string.

The gallery is here.
Images MTH_0452, 453, 455, 457

These were part of a series of 6 pics shot at 6 FPS.

I went back and checked the Date/Time for all four pics and they all have the same info:

"Date/Time: 2009:06:22 19:36:55"

So, I don't think it is Sumgmugs sort feature that is at fault. And since I shoot burst a lot to capture the action, I have several other pics out of order in several galleries. Bummer!
Mike

jfriend

MT Stringer wrote:

Thanks John, but I'm combining files from two different cameras with different naming conventions. One starts with MTH_0001 and the other Img_0001. Both cameras are synced with the time and date.

The problem seems to be a burst of images. Exif shows the same date stamp for all four or 5 images. When they upload, they get jumbled up.

Mike

There is no way to fix that on Smugmug. It isn't Smugmug's fault as the EXIF time just doesn't have enough detail to distinguish between multiple shots in a burst within the same second. I sure hope somebody in the standards bodies and camera manufacturers is working on fixing this as it can be quite a pain for those of us who take multiple fps shots.

The only way I know of to fix something like this is to rename your image files into something that is date-taken-filename. When exporting in Lightroom, that would be this set of codes:

{Date (YYYYMMMDD)}-{Hour}{Minute}{Second}-{Filename}

That creates a filename like this:

20090626-103004-MTH_009

Your can then sort by filename (in Smugmug or any other app) and get the right order. The textified date-time gets things in the right order by date/time and the filename on the end resolves things in filename order when the date/time is the same. Images from different cameras are sorted first by date/time giving you what you want.