Arrange by time + sync 3 cameras = not going well

p39photo

So I'm trying to sync three cameras from a recent wedding. (All 3 Nikon) Images are uploaded to gallery but when I choose to arrange by time and date shot, I get each camera's images together (D80 then D700, etc), not as a collective time progression throughout the day.

Thoughts? Just curious.

Thanks much!

jfriend

That usually happens if the clocks on the three cameras were not accurate or had the wrong timezone or had the wrong daylight savings setting. If they clocks were all synced, it should work.

If you want me to take a look, please post a link to the gallery.

p39photo

jfriend wrote:

That usually happens if the clocks on the three cameras were not accurate or had the wrong timezone or had the wrong daylight savings setting. If they clocks were all synced, it should work.

If you want me to take a look, please post a link to the gallery.

Makes perfect sense. Thanks!

wellman

p39photo wrote:

So I'm trying to sync three cameras from a recent wedding. (All 3 Nikon) Images are uploaded to gallery but when I choose to arrange by time and date shot, I get each camera's images together (D80 then D700, etc), not as a collective time progression throughout the day.

Thoughts? Just curious.

Thanks much!

If you're a Lightroom user, you can batch edit the timestamps. When shooting a wedding with multiple cameras, I usually shoot a photo of the same clock with all cameras. Then the timestamps from all cameras can be synced to the same basis in post.

jfriend

wellman wrote:

If you're a Lightroom user, you can batch edit the timestamps. When shooting a wedding with multiple cameras, I usually shoot a photo of the same clock with all cameras. Then the timestamps from all cameras can be synced to the same basis in post.

The idea of shooting the same clock (with a second hand) with all three cameras is nice and simple. That let's you figure out how each is off relative to a common time source.

I annually shoot a school talent show with another photographer. The result of the shoot is about 1500 shots that need to be merged, broken a gallery for each act and then sorted into proper sequence.

You'll laugh in this story at what a slow learner I can be.

The first year, I didn't think about the merging process at all ahead of time and we just posted one gallery per act for each photographer. We didn't merge them at all. We did get questions about why two galleries per act, but people were still appreciative.

The second year, I thought about the merging ahead of time and we set our clocks to be the same, but the other photographer's time zone setting was off by an hour. Had to use LR to correct all of his by an hour.

The third year, his main camera and my main camera were actually synced, but the timezone setting was off on my backup camera which I hadn't used since we were in Africa. The shots from that camera had to be fixed in LR.

The fourth year, we finally got it right.

This spring will be the fifth year. I wonder if we can get it right again.