BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

Someone asked me why I used multiple cards during a recent shoot. Our curling club had its annual major bonspiel (tournament) from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon. Fourteen teams participated. I took about 800 shots including teams, on ice action, socializing in the warm room, the event finals and the awards ceremony. I was running back and forth between the ice and the warm room each day. Four of the cards were San Disk 32 gb and one was a 16 gb. So why five cards? I import into LRCC and if I had put all of the photos on one or even two cards it would be a nightmare separating into the five categories. This way I call my shoot Gov17 and the the file name for all but teams is OnIce, or WarmRoom, or Awards, or Finals, depending on the category. For the teams I named the shoot Gov17-Teams and the for the file name I used the team name such as Bucks County, Albany1, etc. next job is doing the import tomorrow followed by some post processing for exposure, then exporting jpegs to put in Dropbox for the curlers. Incidentally the most shots, about 300 before culling were on ice. Baby it's cold out there! LOL. Our ice shed is between 35 and 40 degrees. The fewest shots were the awards ceremony, only about 50.
Bud

quagmire Loc: Greenwood,South Carolina

Must had it set for raw.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I take pictures in various settings for weddings and equine competitions (Hunter/Jumper). And I rename images on import, but only use two cards - one to store the image and one to store a backup (both raw). If I run out of room I use a second pair. I use On1 to review and rename the images, so they are in their correctly named folders even before I open LR. LR is a pig when it comes to importing and initial review.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

I like the way you think! I have three cards, all 32 SDHC, one marked "F2" for my stepchildren, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (and maybe a great-great-grandchild), one marked "RR" for any railroad related pictures and one marked "WL" for wildlife, refuges and landscapes. In addition, I fill my folder with other cards and some small removable Avery labels if I find another subject I want to shoot. I try not to mix subjects on cards. When I download a card with a dozen unrelated subjects on it, I get SO confused trying to catalog them. Of course I get confused easily anyway.

Ctrclckws

You have found a method that works for you, use it!

800 shots of different aspects of the same event, definitely easier if it's presorted.

picsman Loc: Scotland

I dont use lightroom but to separate categories can't you keyword them in batches? If I want to do something similar I use the time data to find a batch.

Jrhoffman75 Loc: Conway, New Hampshire

WF2B has a system that works for him. I see the potential though for possibly misplacing cards in that method. For Canon cameras you can create multiple folders on a card (100, 101, 102 etc.) and use the folders for different events.

Fotomacher Loc: Toronto

I use the folders on my Nikon D810 for the same purpose. Copy to the external HD and then import to LR.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

I'm a huge advocate of folks doing things in a way that makes sense to them, so from that perspective, it appears you have a handle on things. Just to give food for thought, I would have imported all the images into one folder, then used 'Collections' to separate the images as they needed to be. Collections are a very powerful feature of LR.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Good idea, but I'd be concerned about switching cards in and out so often, especially in cold weather with cold fingers. If your camera had two slots, that might help by switching the priority card via the Menu.

Whatever works for you.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

lsimpkins Loc: SE Pennsylvania

I have to agree that LR is slow at the Import process, although I think that building its Previews is the most time consuming part of the operation. I do have On1 and on my next shoot, I think I will use it to do initial culling before import to LR. Who knows, with On1 Raw I may end up using LR less.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

He's explaining why he used 5 cards. He's not saying that he filled all 5 cards and asking why.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I use multiple cards... currently about 22 of them, in sizes that hold 250 to 500 image (approx.) apiece.

Some days I'll fill many of them. Sometimes I'm swapping cards fairly often, about every hour or two, in two or three cameras. It only takes a few seconds to swap them, I've done it hundreds or thousands of times over the years and almost never had any problem. Most are Compact Flash, a few SD. Never damaged a card or card socket.

I usually don't try to use the cards for sorting purposes. My reasoning for not using fewer, bigger cards or one gigantic one is simple... I don't want to "put all my eggs in one basket". If a card fails or is lost or goes through the laundry in a pocket, I'd rather lose a small portion of a day's work, than the whole thing!

I can recall having card issues of one sort or another about 3 times, now well over a decade shooting digital almost exclusively. Twice it was card failures... once was my own mistake pulling a card out too quickly (older camera that didn't clear the buffer as quickly). Only lost a small number of images each time, as a result.

For sorting purposes, I use Lightroom. After downloading everything, my first step is always to sort all the shots from the day chronologically (I sync my cameras' clocks before each shoot, so the sequence is accurate). After that I use the color and star system for sorting purposes (not rating or ranking). This gives me up to 36 different "tags" to use sorting (5 colors & no color, plus up to five stars & no stars... 6 x 6 = 36). I can use as many or as few of those as needed for any given event or day of shooting. My rating system with LR is simple, too... "white flag" files will get batch converted and be proofed out... "no flag" photos I keep but don't convert because they are duplicates or have some minor flaws, but might be usable... and "black flag" photos are more seriously flawed, are largely unusable for one reason or another, and eventually get trashed. I don't see any need for more than three ratings.

jcarlosjr Loc: Orange County

A lot of this discussion is spent explaining methods to sort and keep the many digital images we capture in some easy to identify plan.

In the PD days (pre-digital) I was traveling quite a bit. There were so many new things to see and photograph, I needed a way to jog my memory about what I had captured. So after a few years of mystery photographs I developed the following system.

I carried a small notebook and a fine point marker. I tried to make a note about my subject matter and then photograph the note before taking the shots. Sometimes a picture would present itself before I could prepare a note. In these occurrences I would make my note after the shots, but I would draw a left facing arrow to remind me the note applied the pictures before the note. Over time I refined the technique to include the date (there was no metadata on film negatives).

Now in the digital era, I use the same technique. Yes, the date is in the file properties, but when quickly looking at thumbnails I can easily determine the date of my shots. I also “burn” spacer shots between changes of subject, by shooting a picture of my shoe. Silly sounding, but it has saved me time as I scroll through the many shots we seem to take with digital, and a deliberate shot of a shoe does not look like an accidental exposure.

A notebook and marker seem so "old school", but it works for me.