How to bring pictures taken with two cameras in chronological order

[Roland Scheiner]

You know the problem: One camera is equiped with a standard zoom lens, the other camera with a superwideangle zoom lens for instance. You take pictures of different motives with the two cameras, maybe hundreds of pictures. You process them with the software of Canon. And now you want to bring the picture taken with the two cameras in chronological order. Each camera stores the pictures in chronological order but you cannot mix them.


I thought of the following solution: Camera A stores the files with AXXX100.jpg...101,102,103 and so on. Camera B stores the files with BXXX100.jpg.....101,102,103 and so on Would it be a possibility to convert the files of camera B into Axxx100a.jpg (if this picture would be the next in chronological order)and Axxx100b.jpg. Does the PC list up the pictures then Axxx100.jpg thereafter in Axxx100a.jpg and Axxx100b.jpg


Or are there other possibilities, maybe a programm etc.


Thank you very much in advance for your help.

[realityinabox]

I actually had the samedilemmatoday. Using Adobe Bridge, I simply set the "Sort By" field to "Date Created". The same option should be available in other programs, and even the Windows OS file folders (I'm on Mac so I can't confirm).


I haven't gotten to the step of renaming the files, so I'm not sure how you'd go about that. I'm hoping that in Bridge the batch-renamer will allow the files to be renamed in the same order as the "Sort By" order as above. If worse comes to worst, you could sort as above and rename by hand.

[jfritz]

If you are comfortable working on the command line, you can use jhead (free software available from http://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel/jhead/) to rename the files to reflect the date/time in the EXIF data.


(It is very handy for manipulating and managing all manner of EXIF data.)

[realityinabox]

I just tested it in Bridge and it will rename files in the order you have them sorted. So if you have Bridge, there you go. If you don't, other programs might have similarfunctionality.


But from the sounds of it, you just want to be able to view them chronologically, in which case, doing "sort by" or "arrange by" should work.

[Roland Scheiner]

Thank you very much. Could please write down the name of the website again. I copied your name but there was "NOT FOUND"


I hit http:// www.sentex.ca only the website appeared but not the programm you wrote about.

[jfritz]

Sorry, that was the first time I've posted a link on these forums, and did not make the link clickable.





The link is: http://www.sentex.ca/~mwandel/jhead/<a>.[/URL]





Just an FYI, what jhead will allow you to do is to rename the file based on the timestamp in the file, which you can then sort with any program. It can also modify the time in a series of photos by a set amount, if the camera's clock was wrong. (And a whole lot of other things that are irrelevant to this discussion.)

[Daniel Browning]

I'm sure there are lots of possible solutions. I use Lightroom to do this as well as setup my own "custom" order for the images... the chronological order is not usually the best story-telling order. I'm sure there's some good software that will give you plenty of options for renaming them just as you like. One possible solution, for Windows 7, is to use Windows Explorer. For example:

• Start-&gt;My Documents-&gt;My Pictures
• View-&gt;Details
• The vile columns across the top are usually "Name", "Date modified", "Type", "Size", etc.
• Right click on one of these and select "Date Created".
• Click on the new "Date Created" column to sort the images.
• Select all images (ctrl-A or mouse)
• Right click on one of the selected images and choose "rename"
• After you enter a name, windows will add "(1)", "(2)" to all the images in the folder in the sorted sequence.

[Jayson]

Here's what I do for times when I have multiple cameras working. Before you shoot, hook one of the cameras up to the same computer with EOS utility running. Go into the camera menu on the utility until you find the date/time section. Make sure the camera is in sync with the time on the computer. Hook up the next camera and do the same thing. Now they should be all on the same time. Once that is done, when you want to sort them on any of the software or picture viewers that you have, you just need to select date taken and then pick if you want them from last to first, or first to last.


Now if you were asking how to do it if you had not done a sync, refer to what everyone else is saying. Sorry if mine didn't help at all, but that's what I do to prepare.

[clemmb]

I'm sure there are lots of possible solutions. I use Lightroom to do this as well as setup my own "custom" order for the images... the chronological order is not usually the best story-telling order. I'm sure there's some good software that will give you plenty of options for renaming them just as you like. One possible solution, for Windows 7, is to use Windows Explorer. For example:

• Start-&gt;My Documents-&gt;My Pictures
• View-&gt;Details
• The vile columns across the top are usually "Name", "Date modified", "Type", "Size", etc.
• Right click on one of these and select "Date Created".
• Click on the new "Date Created" column to sort the images.
• Select all images (ctrl-A or mouse)
• Right click on one of the selected images and choose "rename"
• After you enter a name, windows will add "(1)", "(2)" to all the images in the folder in the sorted sequence.

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I never thought about doing it this way but it does work. It is kinda tricky but it does the job. You need to make sure the clocks in both cameras are synced.


Mark

[Roland Scheiner]

Thanks a lot for your help. I used your method to bring the pictures in chronological order. And it worked perfectly.


I have Windows XP. In the explorer you can show up mini pictures. Click between the pictures. A pull down menue appears.


Select by Date click again. It takes a few minutes (approx. 700 pictures from a trip through Norway) and the deal was done.