Organizing photos from two photographers

Graham Cracker · June 28, 2010

I shot my first wedding and have all my pictures and my assistants in LR is there a way to organize chronologically from the two cameras? can I do it by the time stamp in the metadata? Can you manually change the organization of them for the slide show? Thanks Patrick

PrettyKitty · June 28, 2010

Graham Cracker wrote: »

I shot my first wedding and have all my pictures and my assistants in LR is there a way to organize chronologically from the two cameras? can I do it by the time stamp in the metadata? Can you manually change the organization of them for the slide show? Thanks Patrick

If you're in the grid mode, (and you have all the pictures in one folder)there's a selection in the bottom - to organize by "capture time" (or something like that) vs. a few other options. Hopefully both the cameras were synchronized as far as time goes! I had some people hand me pictures from events, and their cameras weren't properly set - so that was a pain to manually sort through!

urbanaries · June 28, 2010

Worst part of being a wedding photographer...hands down!

Graham Cracker wrote: »

I shot my first wedding and have all my pictures and my assistants in LR is there a way to organize chronologically from the two cameras? can I do it by the time stamp in the metadata? Can you manually change the organization of them for the slide show? Thanks Patrick

This is the most painful part of the processing task for me personally. I usually shoot with two cameras so even when I don't have a 3rd (or 4th) camera it is always a PITA.

My current workflow:
-in Library mode, grid view, filter by metadata and then camera serial number. I generally rate photos first this way, then I am only dealing with getting my selected shots in the proper order.
-use Collections to categorize (getting ready, ceremony etc) and order the shots (grid view, sort by user order) once I have the set narrowed down.

I wish there was a way to do it better, but I have tried to manually sync camera times with no luck. Even if we could, human intervention is (in my experience) still required to put shots in proper "storytelling" order if there are simultaneous shooters.

Scott_Quier · June 28, 2010

PK has it pretty well nailed. The best process I was able to come up with is to have the EOS Utilty installed on a laptop and then synchronize each camera that is going to be used with the clock on the laptop. This gets the clocks in each camera set close (enough?) to each other.

Then, in post, you can, indeed, sort the entire set (from all the cameras) by the capture time that is written to the image EXIF data.

Another trick I used to help with keeping total image count from the client is to rename the image files using the two-digit hour, minutes, and seconds of the capture time (a six digit series) followed by a custom text identifying the client. You can also predicate all that with yymmdd.

For the slide show, yes you can re-order them to fit your needs. Just click and drag.

Graham Cracker · June 28, 2010

PrettyKitty wrote: »

If you're in the grid mode, (and you have all the pictures in one folder)there's a selection in the bottom - to organize by "capture time" (or something like that) vs. a few other options. Hopefully both the cameras were synchronized as far as time goes! I had some people hand me pictures from events, and their cameras weren't properly set - so that was a pain to manually sort through!

I did see this but unfortunately my partner just got his new camera and didn't set the time correctly. Anyway to manually click and drag around the pictures? Thanks PAtrick

liflander · June 28, 2010

Re: Organizing photos from two photographers
You can also batch edit the exif data to change all of the time stamps on one of the camera's shots to bring all the shots into sync, then just sort by date modified.
There is freeware out there that will do this batch exif editing (on PC, not sure about Mac). Just search shareware.com.
Mark

LiflanderPhotography.com

Graham Cracker · June 28, 2010

Scott_Quier wrote: »

PK has it pretty well nailed. The best process I was able to come up with is to have the EOS Utilty installed on a laptop and then synchronize each camera that is going to be used with the clock on the laptop. This gets the clocks in each camera set close (enough?) to each other.

Then, in post, you can, indeed, sort the entire set (from all the cameras) by the capture time that is written to the image EXIF data.

Another trick I used to help with keeping total image count from the client is to rename the image files using the two-digit hour, minutes, and seconds of the capture time (a six digit series) followed by a custom text identifying the client. You can also predicate all that with yymmdd.

For the slide show, yes you can re-order them to fit your needs. Just click and drag.

Where in slide show can you click and drag? and can you burn a slide show to DVD? Thanks for the help to both of you. Good lesson learned.

heatherfeather · June 28, 2010

Actually LR can do a batch shift of the time pretty simply.

Here is what you do:

Find a shot that is a defining moment that both cameras caught. A high five or something.
In library grid mode in the right panel all the way at the bottom will show the capture time. On a piece of paper, write down the time that the defining moment happened for the main camera.
Then select all the photos from the second shooter's camera, but highlight the photo with the "defining moment". Click the button to the right of the capture time.
Choose "adjust to a specified time and date" and then enter the time you wrote down from the main camera's "defining moment" photo. It will shift all of the selected photos in the second shooters by that much time, and not change them all to the same exact time. (I think the wording is misleading in LR, so that is why nobody knows this.) I only found it after a lot of head scratching and and then finally tried it on something small.

Good luck!

Graham Cracker · June 28, 2010

heatherfeather wrote: »

Actually LR can do a batch shift of the time pretty simply.

Here is what you do:

Find a shot that is a defining moment that both cameras caught. A high five or something.
In library grid mode in the right panel all the way at the bottom will show the capture time. On a piece of paper, write down the time that the defining moment happened for the main camera.
Then select all the photos from the second shooter's camera, but highlight the photo with the "defining moment". Click the button to the right of the capture time.
Choose "adjust to a specified time and date" and then enter the time you wrote down from the main camera's "defining moment" photo. It will shift all of the selected photos in the second shooters by that much time, and not change them all to the same exact time. (I think the wording is misleading in LR, so that is why nobody knows this.) I only found it after a lot of head scratching and and then finally tried it on something small.

Good luck!

Fantastic. Thank you so much for the help. I will try tonight.

Graham Cracker · June 28, 2010

Graham Cracker wrote: »

Fantastic. Thank you so much for the help. I will try tonight.

It worked once I selected the Default view of the metadata. Perfect, thanks so much. Patrick

marikris · June 29, 2010

Awesome! I learned something new too ^_^

FedererPhoto · June 30, 2010

Yay.

Yeah, remembering to set the cameras to the same time (to the second) before a shoot is important... makes life easier afterwards (even if it can be fixed, its' a pain -- especially as you start to up the number of cameras)

Organizing photos from two photographers

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