Stage Light Loc: Northeast

For the future you might try synching the times of the two cameras, Just set the time of one camera to the same time as the other camera. When you upload to Lightroom or other programs you can just sort with capture time or digitize time.

I believe you can also change the the time of one camera to match the other camera after the photos are taken in Lightroom.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Faststone Photo Resizer can handle batch file renaming very efficiently. I used to use it for this and other batch processing work, before Lightroom was available. Faststone can do a lot of things.... and it's free...just Google it.

For the past six or seven years I've used Lightroom and have worked with as many as five or six second shooters at some larger events (over 20,000 images at one multi-day event I recall).

It's important before the shoot to sync all our cameras' clocks, which I have set-ups to do with one of my laptops. We just connect each of our cameras one at a time and sync it with the laptop's clock. This is the most precise way to sync them (within a fraction of a second). Otherwise, I've seen considerable variation from camera to camera (even when using two or more different cameras myself at some events). They drift out of sync pretty rapidly, too... Usually are several seconds apart after a couple days or a week.

If the cameras aren't in sync, our photos will not show up in the actual order shot. This is probably more critical at action/sporting events, particularly if being shot from multiple angles, than at weddings, where slower-paced shooting by everyone probably can tolerate greater variance in the cameras' clocks, nor is as-precise sequencing likely to be needed.

Throughout the event we drag and drop each person's images into their own, separate folder, then after they've been compiled look at them via a "parent" folder. This makes it possible to see all the images in all the sub-folders at the same time, sort them in the order shot, then use LR's file renaming to give them sequential names. (I happen to use yyyy_mm_dd_xxxx, with xxxx being the sequential file number, but there are multiple ways to rename files possible with either LR or Faststone or anything else.)

Then, because I still need to later be able to quickly and easily tell who shot what, after sequential renaming of all files, I go into each sub-folder and rename each person's files again, but this time only appending the shooter's initials to each of the files. I could just look up who shot an image in the EXIF, of course, but this makes it much faster and easier to identify them at a glance.

I end up with file names like: yyyy_mm_dd_xxxx_AM, yyyy_mm_dd_xxxx_GR, yyyy_mm_dd_xxxx_DS, etc. (Later when I'm working with the files I'll sometimes append more codes for various reasons.... Those are sometimes numeric or alpha-numeric, but others that are alpha I keep lower case to be distinct from the shooter's initials.

(Note, at the same time I also set the copyright info for each photographer in the EXIF, because my second shooters usually retain their copyright. They just sign an agreement that, among other things, licenses me to sell their images in limited ways for a set period of time. Plus, I often apply other presets such as lens correction profiles, etc., during this batch processing.)

You CANNOT do this on a piecemeal basis. I.e. you CAN'T rename files as the images are being downloaded periodically during the day. You must have all the day's or event's shoot from everyone compiled before you can start renaming, if you want them to be certain to have them named sequentially.

Or, at very least, you would need to have everything done by everyone up to a certain point in time copied and compiled. For example, if all the morning's images from everyone have been downloaded and compiled, you might then go ahead and rename those, while off shooting the afternoon's work. Later you do the same with the afternoon's images, simply picking up the sequencing where the morning's left off. On the rare occasion where we had someone sitting at a computer processing images while we shot, we'd sometimes do compilations and renaming with as little as a half-hour delay (such as when making prints and selling them on-site... but we try to avoid that because it's labor intensive, requires a lot of set up and extra gear, and makes quality control a lot more difficult).

This is one reason I won't let LR up to do anything automatically... to try to do the renaming and such automatically, during some automated Import and copy process.

With Lightroom, I don't use it's Import to copy/download images at all. Instead I just drag and drop and copy them from the memory cards into folders I've prepared in advance, using my computer's OS. Later I point LR to that folder or folders on the computer and tell it to Import from there. This way the downloads from multiple memory cards don't need to be - and usually aren't - in the exact sequence they were shot. Later when I have Imported them and look at the compiled whole in LR, it can show them in proper sequence (regardless of the original file names).

Most of this could also be done in Faststone, I am fairly sure (it's been some years since I used it, now). But LR is more efficient by allowing me to view multiple folders at the same time and by doing more things in a single pass.... where I'd probably have to make several passes to do the same in Faststone.

Oh, and I am not too quick to cull files. More than once... well actually fairly frequently I've been able to "save" a good, usable image with a minor problem - such as one person's eyes being closed - by copying over the needed area from another, nearby file that I likely would have trashed for other reasons.

fantom Loc: Colorado

What makes you think his ammo was "cold"?

Bobbee

What app do you use to sync the camera time to the laptop?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'd make it camera>card>named folder>postprocessing>named folder/finished
If you don't change the camera file name you want to separate shoots into separate folders rather than one big master folder. Otherwise you run up against the repetition of file names every 10,000 shots with the camera's 8.3 filename format


Agree. Keywording is essential to future location of files.
However, redundancy and repetition are useful as backup so if you rename your files you can locate them without using your Lightroom database (or other DAM system you might be using).



That assumes that stupid hats are not a frequent subject of your shoots. Big assumption.

Summary:
(1) Use keywords. Use enough keywords to fully describe subject (generic keywords added at download time plus specific keywords for stupid hats or other individualized items). Names are important. Very important. Just think 75 years into the future when Joe Blftzk's wake is being held. You can just enter that name and come up with all the photos you have of him and take the appropriate ones to the wake.
(2) Use descriptive file names. Since you're going to be looking in your archives for a photo that was stored 75 years ago (25 years after you stopped using Adobe Lightroom) you will have the file name to search for. I must say I've had unreliable results looking for metadata elements with Windows File Explorer, but it does well on file names. (Maybe 75 years from now computers will have better search options but I'll be over 150 years old by then and won't care).

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

If you use Bridge, you can put all the images in one folder, sort that folder on the date/time of creation, then batch rename with whatever name, but include a 3 or 4 digit number (which Bridge will increment.)

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

Mike Jackson...Welcome to the Hog Mike...and TSilva are on the right track.
Put them all in one folder.
By all means cull out the bad ones. However with 800 + or - images that may take some doing.
Import them into LightRoom.
Select all the (remaining) images.
Export them to the SAME folder.
Create a sub-folder for the renamed files.
Use an appropriate title for the sub-folder. This can also be the name for each image. (i.e. The Jones Wedding 11-10-2015)
Choose RAW or Tiff as the file format.
Test out the Export Naming choices so you can apply the right one such as:
The Jones Wedding 11-10-2015
All the exported images will have the same name but a unique number will be added.
Depending on your computer, it may take a while for 800 images minus the culls.
After the files are aptly named you can edit them in any program but make sure you edit the images in the SUB-FOLDER so you don't edit an original.
My 2¢.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

Whatever I think of the rest of your suggestions, please please don't write dates in reverse time order. Use yyyy-mm-dd so that sorting works properly.

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

But if you name all the files the same, LR adds a number after the name. Jones Wedding 11-15-2015 1, Jones Wedding 11-15-2015 2, etc. So they will be sorted in order.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

Sure, but do you want all of your "11th day" photos grouped together, regardless of month or year, when you sort by filename? I know that this only applies if all the photos have "Jones Wedding" in the first part of the filename, but think of it from a principle perspective. It's no different than counting numbers where the units turn over before the 10s, then the 100s. Days turn over faster than months, which turn over faster than years.

I suspect most people would not have the problem within any one folder of "Jones Wedding", but if you collected files from various folders into a common folder for some reason then a sorting problem could arise.

Plain and simple -- if you want to sort/organize/name files with dates, configure the date in the logical way (SI convention, BTW).

Corollary: give me one good reason why the year should be the last component of the filename in a filing system where date is important and you will be sorting in chronological order by filename?

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

OK, I see the error in my thinking. I (probably) misread the OPs problem of wanting to rename both Canon and Nikon images and put them in order. I didn't consider or read the part about "chronological order."

My method would give all images the same name and assign a number, but it won't allow for sorting chronologically unless LR has a facility to sort the imported images in chronological order according to time.
My apologies. :oops: