Returning to the hobby.........need a little guidance.

[Randy]

I like
Year/month/outing name

Ask yourself what do you need to know to find an original file

 

[Butlerkid]

I like
Year/month/outing name

Ask yourself what do you need to know to find an original file

Agreed. But for me, the year is meaningless. I've been to Florida, Africa or Albuquerque for X years! So location and subject are more important. Thus I heavily emphsize keywording. YMMV.........

 

[gavinator68]

Be sure to look up stuff about establishing a color-managed system. Warning: The topic can be daunting at first.

OH MY!!!! Mike, you were not kidding when you said that

 

[JLH]

As an educator I was constantly reminded of just how differently people thought and saw things. When doing computer classes where files were set up I only gave guidelines. I advised the students to think of how their personal mental filling system worked. How they they remember things, how did they associate things. No one system works for everyone. We all have our own way of thinking. I set up filing systems in a simple fashion by "area", pets, travel, friends, hobbies, whatever. inside that I can now sort by time, year, month, etc. Or I can sort by place further broken down by time. The ways to organize things are endless. While many can make good suggestions in the end it comes down to personal preference, making the system work like your brain does.
Same goes for file names; they need to fit you and how you think and work. Having your name on a file might be very handy for some, say if you files are being passed around. For others it would have no meaning. So, I say the very best filing system is the one that works best for YOU. Mine would seem crazy to some. I have "too many" cameras so I sort first by camera, then start breaking things down to categories getting more detailed as the photos are grouped by trip, date, subject, whatever. There can be overlap and for me that is not an issue. Find what works for you and go with it.

 

[Mike Buckley]

There is a lot of bad information out there on the Internet. One site you rarely if ever have to be concerned about is https://www.dpbestflow.org/ The authors of the articles at that website are widely recognized experts when it comes to explaining best practices. Notice that color management is discussed along with virtually anything else you would want to consider.

 

[F15Todd]

I will dive into a specific "Catalog System" such as LR or any other program once I get all of this sorted and have a proper filing system. Right now I am considering the.....

MYNAME_YYYYMMDD_USA_STATE_.RAW type of system.

Does anyone have any other suggestions that will be easier to go back and find a specific image very quickly?

Cheers,

David

I shot mainly sports, but use this format for everything I do. It more subject/date/teams/misc if needed
So something like this
Football 2019-10-12 Farragut at Dobyns-Bennett
Soccer 2019-09-18 Science Hill at Sullivan South Class 3A District Championship

 

[Randy]

Agreed. But for me, the year is meaningless. I've been to Florida, Africa or Albuquerque for X years! So location and subject are more important. Thus I heavily emphsize keywording. YMMV.........

We all probably do this different....if I need to find a file I need the date....

 

[Butlerkid]

We all probably do this different....if I need to find a file I need the date....

True...I sometimes search by date........but the date information is always in the exif so, for me, there's no need to add the date to a file name.

And I keyword my images. So I can filter/search my data base by date, file type, camera, lens, focal length (all exif info) and/or keywords to quickly retrieve any file I want.....without relying on file names.

 

[gavinator68]

We all probably do this different....if I need to find a file I need the date....

This is where I start to get a bit confused as to how the filename and ingestion choices interact with the final resting place for all of the "RAW" files and what they are named when the transfer is complete. I know I can go into my camera menu system and designate a file name to replace the "DSC" portion. I replaced DSC with 700 and 300 for each camera respectively. I also added my name to the "Copyright" portion in the setup menu. But how do these choices interact with the way I choose to import the RAW files into Transfer 2 and ultimately where they land. And more importantly, how does me changing the filename to 700 help or hinder the file naming that I seem to think happens when you import the images from the camera?

In other words.........I "think" that between my choice of filename in the camera body and the inherent metadata automatically attached by the camera that somehow, using the filename I gave the images, in my case 700 and the metadata, that if I make the correct choices in the Transfer 2 ingestion dialog box that I can have the computer properly name the files with the date, location or purpose of the shoot.

I hope I am more clear than I think I am by reading this back to myself.

LOL

David

 

[Randy]

This is where I start to get a bit confused as to how the filename and ingestion choices interact with the final resting place for all of the "RAW" files and what they are named when the transfer is complete. I know I can go into my camera menu system and designate a file name to replace the "DSC" portion. I replaced DSC with 700 and 300 for each camera respectively. I also added my name to the "Copyright" portion in the setup menu. But how do these choices interact with the way I choose to import the RAW files into Transfer 2 and ultimately where they land. And more importantly, how does me changing the filename to 700 help or hinder the file naming that I seem to think happens when you import the images from the camera?

In other words.........I "think" that between my choice of filename in the camera body and the inherent metadata automatically attached by the camera that somehow, using the filename I gave the images, in my case 700 and the metadata, that if I make the correct choices in the Transfer 2 ingestion dialog box that I can have the computer properly name the files with the date, location or purpose of the shoot.

I hope I am more clear than I think I am by reading this back to myself.

LOL

David

We need to talk 704-726-6875

 

[Butlerkid]

Ingesting (moving) and file from the camera to a computer does not change the name of the file. So if you have the camera set up to name files a certain way, that is then the "only" file name associated with that file.

Copyright information is exif information that is associated with the file. Date, camera, lens, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, etc are also exif information. All of this information it part of the raw file.

LR is processing software that also provides data base management capability. When you import files into LR, you are NOT moving them......you are simply telling LR to record their current location. Think of the data base system as the old card system we used to use in the library to find a book! LOL!

Issues like this are the reason I strongly recommend a full course by Ben Willmore or Time Grey on how to use LR. Such a course will cover renaming, importing, processing and ALL the other questions that you are asking. AND you will learn in a logical processing, starting at the beginning and proceeding through the process of taking a raw file and working with it. Right now, you are jumping all over the place and wondering how the questions and answers fit together. This approach is making it hard to understand things that are actually fairly simple.

 

[Mike Buckley]

This is where I start to get a bit confused as to how the filename and ingestion choices interact with the final resting place for all of the "RAW" files and what they are named when the transfer is complete.

You seem to have a good handle on this stuff insofar as anybody can before they actually use the system. One never knows how they're going to use a system until they at least begin using it. Even so, you might decide to change your system a bit after you've used it for six months to a year.

 

[Randy]

True...I sometimes search by date........but the date information is always in the exif so, for me, there's no need to add the date to a file name.

And I keyword my images. So I can filter/search my data base by date, file type, camera, lens, focal length (all exif info) and/or keywords to quickly retrieve any file I want.....without relying on file names.

I don’t add the date to the filenmae
Searching windows files on exif date is not the way I want to search

 

[Mike Buckley]

Ingesting (moving) and file from the camera to a computer does not change the name of the file.

While that is technically correct, ingesting and changing the name of the files can be done at the same time in a batch process.

I strongly recommend a full course by Ben Willmore or Time Grey on how to use LR.

That might be a good idea even if the OP doesn't end up using Lightroom, as the course might provide a framework that would apply to whatever software application(s) he decides upon.

 

[vinman]

Welcome to the Cafe. Kudos to you for thinking about how to organize your files at the outset. Most of us were not that keen at the beginning and suffered for it down the road.

I've settled on a simple system that works for me. Photos taken on a specific date are named for that date followed by a hyphenated suffix for the numbered photo on that date. The first photo taken today would be 101019-1, etc... I then place the photos in a monthly file with the year (October2019).

As far as your gear, the D700 is still my all time favorite camera body. Wonderful for portraits coupled with some good prime glass.

And are still suffering to this day!!

 

[Butlerkid]

While that is technically correct, ingesting and changing the name of the files can be done at the same time in a batch process.

Correct....they can be done at the same time but one doesn't have to change file names when simply moving a file (which I didn't mention because I was trying to keep the information simple and not add extra complexity that might just confuse). The point I was trying to make is that simply moving a file from a camera or card to a computer or hard drive does not somehow change the file name or exif information associated with that file.

 

[acnomad]

Ingesting (moving) and file from the camera to a computer does not change the name of the file.

This is sometimes but not always true. Many software tools offer an option to rename at the time of ingestion. I find the default file format used by Nikon cameras to be completely insufficient, so I set the option in my software to rename every file at ingestion.

 

[Butlerkid]

This is sometimes but not always true. Many software tools offer an option to rename at the time of ingestion. I find the default file format used by Nikon cameras to be completely insufficient, so I set the option in my software to rename every file at ingestion.

Again, simply moving a file does NOT change the file name. Yes, you can change a file name at the same time, but that is a option....not a requirement.

 

[acnomad]

+1 for Photo Mechanic.

This software is the single most valuable tool in my workflow, whether I’m working with archived images or ingesting new ones. I started using it two years ago. The amount of time and energy it has saved me has been worth every penny of investment and the small effort it took to learn how to use it.

No matter which tool I use for post processing, every one of my image’s first stop is Photo Mechanic.

 

[Mike Buckley]

every one of my image’s first stop is Photo Mechanic

I've used the same approach for years with my stand-alone cataloging software. It's the hub of everything I do with my image files and corresponding xmp files; I use that software to download the files from the memory card to my computer and to simultaneously change the file names and add metadata to the files, to cull the images, to hand the image files off to post-processing software, to add more metadata to the images in the cataloging process, to resize image files for display here, to move the files to their final resting place, to create slide shows for display on my television or projector, etc., etc., etc.