Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

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Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

Postby tdouty » Sun Jun 15, 2014 2:56 am

First off ... Great program! I love it, love it, love it! ... but. Here's what I'm up against. My wife and I shoot weddings. We rename all the images by time and then merge them together so the bride and groom can see a chronological story of the day. To do this, I sync up the day and time on the cameras exactly to the second just before the wedding.

When I get home, I immediately copy all the images to the computer and leave the originals on the SD card. When I open the jpg and raw files on the computer in the renamer utility, the created date seems to be the date I copied the images to the computer and not the date the pictures were taken. The last modified date "seems" to be the original time and date the picture was taken. It is really close to right, but not quite. However, I go with this date sort and do my renaming. Then I import them into Lightroom and Lightroom seems to organize the images by the exact date and time the images were taken because they are in order exactly as they should be for the images out of both cameras. It probably is using the EXIF data I would guess? However according to the names of the files as I'm viewing them sequentially in Lightroom, the names are not in order. For instance I have pictures of the bridesmaids and bride going down the isle. In Lightroom, they are perfectly in order. But the names are out of sequence which indicates the the "date modified" in the renamer utility was out of whack. As an example, I have a picture I took from the front of the church and one my wife took from the back. The bride is at the same place in her walk. The time in Lightroom is exactly the same for each of the files in Lightroom's metadata. However in naming the files apart numerically by 5 (to leave room for this problem with renaming), the one file is named Stephanie-Sam-2580 and the other is named Stephanie-Sam-2505. This causes Windows to separate the images by 15 pictures in Windows Explorer when we count by fives. This makes it so I have to rename files afterwards at the end of the process. Do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong or what I can do to fix it? I have 1800 images to sort through. I started with the File Renamer Basic and downloaded and installed Bulk Rename Utility in hopes it would fix the problem, but it didn't. This is a great program and I'd pay for it if there was a charge, but it would be wonderful to be able to find a fix for this.
tdouty
 
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ExifDate Ordering and extracting

Postby truth » Mon Jun 16, 2014 5:54 am

Options / Extract / ExifData / Then restart or refresh-filenames
Sort names by Taken-column to sort by Exif's DateTaken

If you'd rather extract ExifDate/Times into NewNames:
8AutoDate:
Mode=Suffux
Type=Taken
Fmt=Custom
Custom=--%H-%M-%S
It appends --Hour-Minute-Seconds to names having such DateTakenData.

So long as your files keep coming-in from the same camera's, you should be OK.
This can be a prob with photographers using multiple cameras with diff formats.
If you run into that, consider using ExifTool, otherwise BRU should be fine.
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Re: Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

Postby tdouty » Mon Jun 16, 2014 1:05 pm

We do use two different cameras so is that a problem? They are both Nikon though. I'm new here so if you think I need the other tool can you tell me what it is and where I can download it? I'd like to keep using BRU but if the other tool does the job better then I'll go that way. Thanks for the help!
tdouty
 
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Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:57 pm

Sort by ExifDate

Postby truth » Tue Jun 17, 2014 7:22 am

BRU shouldnt have a prob, since 95% of cameras assign Exif:DateTaken identically.
Just remember to sort pics by the Taken(Original)-column when needed,
& use 8Type=Taken(Original) if extracting dates/times into NewNames.

ExifTool is a commandline app that does much the same (but a whole lot more).
If you're commandline oriented, it's a must have for anyone dealing w/ metadata.
The standalone executable is at http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Graphical apps just have too many built-in commands that cant be disabled.
Here's a prob using BRU's 8Type=Taken(Recent) to write date/times into NewNames.
It 1st looks for Exif:DateTimeOriginal, but then settles for Exif:CreateDate if needed!

As far as I know, 8Type=Taken(Original) only matches Exif:DateTimeOriginal
So you should be safe with both column-sorting & extracting.

Sorry if my 1st post was misleading: 8Type=Taken (without Original)
I use ver2.7.0.2 that only offers 8Type=Taken (so it settles for even more alternates)
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Re: Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

Postby tdouty » Mon Jun 23, 2014 1:31 am

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Just finished up some wedding pictures and my last step was the renaming and this fixed a problem I've been having for quite some time. It worked perfectly!
tdouty
 
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Re: Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

Postby tdouty » Sun Aug 31, 2014 5:10 pm

Update on this topic...

This method is working for my jpg files, but not for my raw files. Why would that be and can you suggest what I can do to make this work?

Here is an example from a wedding we did yesterday. We had 3 shooters each using different Nikon cameras, all shooting in raw+jpg so we have the original jpgs along with the raw files. I brought all the images in from the cameras and then saved the directory off to an _sav directory. I have the jpgs in a jpg directory and the raw files in their own directory as well.

This examples shows the the option is selected to extract exif data and it was selected that way when I started the utility.
Image

This next screenshot is of the jpg directory after sorting by Taken (Original). I checked and this was indeed the first image shot from the day so this order is correct. I also verified it is correct in the other images.
Image

Here is the equivalent screenshot of the raw directory. Notice that the files are in a different order as can be seen by the names and Taken (Original) columns. In fact the times are not at all the same and differ by about 20 minutes and the first image isn't the first image taken for the day. It is however the first image taken for one of the cameras. Is the problem happening because of the different cameras?
Image
tdouty
 
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Re: Why aren't my pictures in order by EXIF data?

Postby tdouty » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:04 pm

Any ideas? I'm at a road block. What I'm doing now is waiting until I'm all done and have exported and edited everything as jpg and then do the renaming by time taken. It works, but I have two problems.

1 - Different edits on the same file show up as a completely different file name. So instead of PIC1.JPG and PIC1_version_2.JPG, I end up with PIC1.JPG and PIC2.JPG.
2 - The workflow is cumbersome because I have to work with pictures from 3 different cameras all with different filenames (for example, camera 1 may start at DSC1100 and camera 2 may start at DSC8000) and Windows sorts according to filename so they are not in order by time taken until I rename with BRU when I'm all done.

I'd love for the raw files to be in order by time taken.

Hasn't anyone else seen this problem?
tdouty
 
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