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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
File Naming Convention
John Middlebrook, Photographer
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Frederick | MD | US | Posted: 1:21 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> I have a question about what works in the "real world" for sports shooters and how they name files for each event they shoot. Before I do a freelance gig I run through a checklist of my camera setup, one being formatting the drive and setting up the file naming. I leave my files set to "DSC", the default for Nikon but I was curious to how others do this for each event they shoot. Do you leave camera default settings or find it better to change to something easier to manage after the shoot? |
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William Jurasz, Photographer, Assistant
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Cedar Park | TX | USA | Posted: 1:27 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> I do what Peter Krogh suggests in "The DAM Book" (great book). Re-name upon import. An initial, a 6-digit date code (yymmdd), an underscore, then a sequence number. For example, W060624_531.jpg. This is more complex a name than you can get the camera to generate. And it practically guarantees you have unique file names across all your shoots. The only thing I do in-camera is reset the file number to 0, and then set it to continuous number shooting. |
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Kevin M. Cox, Photographer, Assistant
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Round Rock (Austin) | TX | US | Posted: 1:35 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I rename after I ingest. Assuming I shot a minor league game today my files would look like this::
KMC-060630-bbo-RRE-001.jpg
KMC = my initials
060630 = year month day
bbo = AP code for minor league baseball
RRE = Round Rock Express
001 = the sequence number of the photo
The portrait I shot today is named like this:
KMC-060630-JohnDoe-01.jpg
Naming like this guarantees that I will never have a duplicate file name and if there are more then one of us shooting the same event using initials keeps the photos separate as well. |
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Michael Hickey, Photographer
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Kokomo | IN | United States | Posted: 2:04 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> Kevin, don't the dashes screw you up, I had a hard drive that wouldn't work with them, I had change every dash in my archive to an underscore. |
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Kevin M. Cox, Photographer, Assistant
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Round Rock (Austin) | TX | US | Posted: 2:18 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> Michael, I edit photos on both Mac OS X (with drives formatted as Mac OS Extended - Journaled) and on Windows XP (drives formatted as NTFS), my storage server is formated as "ext3" and the production server at my paper is still on OS 9. I've never had a problem working with or saving files with dashes in the name. |
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Paul Montague, Photographer
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Swisher | IA | USA | Posted: 2:22 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I'm pretty much in with William & Kevin. My numbering system is:
20060630_0001.jpg
I've always used the 4-digit year so directories would sort correctly across the 2000 date boundry; if you're doing this prospectively rather than retrospectively, that won't matter unless you're still going to be shooting in 94 years.
I can see the story now... "At 134 years of age, John Doe is the worlds oldest living sports photographer. When asked why he has continued shooting for all of these years, he replied, 'I just wanted to make sure my file numbering system worked'".
The important part is to use "yymmdd" and not "mmddyy". |
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Paul Montague, Photographer
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Swisher | IA | USA | Posted: 2:25 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> As for the dashes, I use underscores because I think they read better, not because they work better. Spaces in file names are the things to avoid like the plague.
Paul |
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Tim Gasperak, Photographer
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San Francisco | CA | USA | Posted: 2:42 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I've been using similar to Paul, William and Kevin, but I insert the time the image was shot rather than simply a serialized number because I want each file name to be unique in my archive. I can't do that if I shoot multiple sessions a day because I might end up with two files with the same serialized number when they're renamed by my ingestion script (e.g. I could have two files named 20060630_0001.xxx).
So my file names look like:
20060630_113225_001.xxx
Or: DATE_TIME_SEQUENCE.xxx
The sequence number is only needed for rapid-fire images that were shot within a fraction of a second (e.g. a 5-frame burst).
The timestamp is harder to read than a serialized number, but the files do line up in the order they were shot. And then every single image in my archive has a unique file name.
If you want to insert your initials, you could use a two-digit date:
tsg_yymmdd_hhmmss_000.xxx |
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Todd Corzett, Photographer
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Livermore | CA | USA | Posted: 4:21 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I reset my in-camera numbers at each reformat. I therefore have a "card number" included for each card used that day. I do my renaming on import, and the final scheme is as follows:
YYMMDD_C####
YY = two digit year
MM = two digit month (pad with "0" if needed)
DD = two digit day (pad with "0" if needed)
C = card number (1-9, then a-z)
#### = four digit number generated by the camera
I don't like including additional info (type of shot, etc.) in the file name because there are many times when you'd have two subjects or tags that would be necessary. As for organizing stuff... I use catalogues (iView) instead.
The biggest flaw I see in my system is that when shooting with two cameras the images will not sort by the time they were captured... but I have the ability to do that in my catalogues very quickly.
-Todd... |
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Jason Jenkins, Photographer
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Las Vegas | NV | USA | Posted: 5:57 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I use the same method as Tim. Partly because of multiple cameras and multiple shoots during a day. So mine end looking like:
2006_0630-1345651.jpg
Year_MMDD_TIMExx.jpg where XX are sequence number for when I am bursting off multiple frames a second. |
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Jim Colburn, Photographer
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Omaha | NE | USA | Posted: 7:06 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> I use My Name.Client or Subject.Date.Sequence Number Generated By Photo Mechanic so it'd be something like
Colburn.GSA.063006.0001 |
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Alan Look, Photographer
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Bloomington | IL | United States | Posted: 7:56 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> Question - Is it a manual operation to put in the time stamp or do you have software to do that? I've always used a seqeuential system - which often leaves a bit to be desired...
Several of the above make more sense. |
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Kevin M. Cox, Photographer, Assistant
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Round Rock (Austin) | TX | US | Posted: 8:05 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> I use Photo Mechanic for my renaming and it can insert the time stamp as part of its renaming feature. |
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Jason Jenkins, Photographer
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Las Vegas | NV | USA | Posted: 8:26 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> My rename process is all automated during the upload using PM or Downloader Pro. |
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Stanley Leary, Photographer
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Roswell | GA | USA | Posted: 8:34 PM on 06.30.06 |
| ->> I have photo mechanic help with renaming my photos using the date and time they were taken ({year4}-{month0}-{day0} {hour24}-{minute}-{second}). If any are shot in the same second it will automatically ad sequential number. |
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Jody Gomez, Photographer
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Murrieta | CA | USA | Posted: 11:48 PM on 06.30.06 |
->> My system is totally different. I use PhotoMechanic and insert the rider's plate number in front of the file number, plus add IPTC information about the location, coyright, contact info, and such. The shooting date is in the IPTC, and all the folders with all the images are dated.
So in the 05May06 Fontana folder the images would be named Rider Number-File Number
and the unedited ones stay in that folder to as just the file number so when I get an order, I pull up the original file and edit for whatever crop size the rider bought.
Make sense? |
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John Middlebrook, Photographer
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Frederick | MD | US | Posted: 9:17 AM on 07.01.06 |
| ->> Thanks to all of you for this valuable input. I shot a semi pro baseball game last night and with a little bit of manipulating in ACDSee, I was able to get everything inputted correctly. |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 12:03 PM on 07.01.06 |
->> Our tagging system is:
[year shot][eventcode/description]_[seq. #]
ie: 06nflchivne_001 . . . . 06nflchivne_705
nflchivne = nfl football - Chicago Bears vs New England Patriots
Both DVD archives and hard drive archive are separated by year to make locating files easier. |
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Stanley Leary, Photographer
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Roswell | GA | USA | Posted: 1:52 PM on 07.01.06 |
->> If you have a database system to search the images, then the naming mainly needs to be unique, thus this is why I use the ({year4}-{month0}-{day0} {hour24}-{minute}-{second}) in PhotoMechanic.
Having a naming system which tells you what an image is without a thumbnail is in my opinion not very useful.
Look at using systems like Cumulus, FileMaker Pro, or something else to find an image. Then you are able to search with text and see an image before pulling the file. |
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