How to import RAW files from 2 cameras in chronological order to Lightroom
 

Hey guys!

I was hoping to pick the brains of some of the professional photographers here on RS. Before this hasn't really bugged me, but I'll be shooting a god-daughter's birthday in February which will be pretty big, and I want to have as easy a workflow as possible.

Essentially, I have 2 DSLRs, and if I straight import the RAW files with a batch rename with the two cards separately, it will sort them together by the camera which created them. This bugs me as it's not necessarily in chronological order in terms of time the photo was taken.

I was wondering if there was an easy way to import files from BOTH cameras into Lightroom so that the RAW files are sorted by time taken. Just a heads-up on my current work flow:

Import photos from card to catalog via LR3 with a batch rename.
Post process.
Save metadata to files.
Export.

Thanks in advanced!

i'm not at my computer that has Lightroom on it but it may be as easy as sorting them by time with the click of your mouse, so even if all the pics from both cameras are in the same date file in your library, you may be able to arrange them by the time they were taken. hell, if you can do this in ANY Windows folder(Views>Details>Time) i'm sure you can do it in LightRoom's library files too.

Hey thanks for the reply. As for Windows, I don't think that will work because I want the date the picture was taken, not "created" (i.e. imported) into the Windows directory. I'll try and play around with Lightroom, but Google isn't helping at all either :(

And also, I want the pictures from the two cameras to have the same naming conventions (say, weddingXX where XX is a sequence), but I guess I could just manually copy the files to disk from the two cameras and import them together via LR. There just has to be a more streamlined way :P

i saw this on petapixel - it might help

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/01/10/...28PetaPixel%29

ok, now that i'm home, it's set by default by capture time, but you can change it. i've tested this by putting images from different times into the same folder. just be sure to set the date/time on both cameras correctly.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/northvanm...ton/sortby.jpg

Not meaning to threadjack...but does anyone have any advice on how to handle the workflow of RAW?

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG? What's the best prog for importing RAW?

Camera Raw works, but i find i'm using LR3 a lot more now as it's fast and easy :)

LR3 is awesome. i import to one hard drive, but i tell the automatic weekly backup to save to a different drive. i suck at organizing ANYTHING, but LR3 makes it pretty stupid proof.

yeah LR3 is really really good so I suggest learning that.

Thank you very much N.V.M that's close to what I'm wanting. The only issue is that when I got to actually import them, they will be sorted into two batches form the two separate cameras. (i.e. if I rename the batch "custom+sequence number", then the sequence number will not be in order between the two cameras.

Sorry if it isn't clear, but do you get what I'm saying? I want the 2 separate imports to have the same batch rename and in chronological order while importing- not necessarily viewing them in my catalog sorted in chronological order. The file names are where I'm having issues.

Thanks again for all your help!

you should try this program.

Amok Exif Sorter

Allows you to sort and rename based on Exif data - date/time, among many other things.

Thanks guys I'll try that!

It's too bad there isn't an easier way to do this directly in LR. Most of the google searches yielded playing with Bridge, which basically does the same thing as AmoK.

Remember the synchronize the clocks in your cameras!
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using a mac, I use automator to add the capture time into the file name, sort and rename the file in order.

And yes, I made a mistake the first time of not synchronizing both clocks.. I had to go through 1000+ images reordering them hahaha that was fun.

yup already on it.

is it really necessary to sync them using the canon eos utility? or is it sufficient to just go into the menu and manually set the H:M:S on both cameras and click "OK" at the same time?

I didn't know you could synchronize them in EOS Utility. I just do it manually on the bodies, as I'll be shooting a wedding with one or two others.

^ yeah my google searches said that the downloadable EOS utility has a built in synchronizer that syncs to your computers clock. this actually was the more predominant response from everything i've read.. i only read one reply saying to do it from the bodies directly.. which is why i had to ask :)

Y not just copy all of the files from both cards to one directory first? Then, import them all into light room, sort by capture time.

From there you can edit what you want and export in sequential order?

Or you can re-export all the newly sorted images back out to TIFF with a custom name and sequence?

because i archive my raws and would like them to be renamed accordingly (and in chronological order) upon import.

the program that few mentioned above will do it if i copy into a directory first, but i was looking for a more streamlined way (which I found with LR).