How do you name your SD cards?

[pondball]

1) Do you have specific names for each card?

- Ie. if you’re going on a trip and know you will have three distinct shooting times (ie. Italy, Spain, France) and you want to keep your photos on the cards according to country, regardless of whether they are filled or not, what is your strategy for this type of shooting?

2) What do you do when going on a trip and you know you’re going to be taking more shots than you have left in your 9,999 numbering sequence that Oly allows?

3) if you use two bodies, do you have a different prefix for your images from the one. I do and it seems to help me keep the files separate from each other more easily... also helps in searches in my photo app (EX4)

4) what do you do about naming when you shoot Raw + Jpg
- I haven’t done this yet but am considering doing it on my em1.2 this time around and sending the Raw photos to slot 1 (faster card) and the jags to slot 2
- or would you just shoot Raw and use the 2nd card slot to make instant backups? I’m concerned about lag if I get a chance to shoot some fast moving wildlife so am swaying away from the backup strategy. Whole on vacations I also tote an iPad and a WD Wireless Passport drive that I download my images to, and then back those up to another SanDisk SSD drive I bring along... so it’s not like I need to use the second slot as backup

If this sounds like a dogs breakfast lmk... if it sounds ok lmk... and if you have some tweaks or suggestions I’d also be glad to hear what they are.

Mostly the urgency is in the card naming and file numbering questions

 

[wjiang]

I just number the cards if I need that many, and rotate when they are approaching full. I don't deal with sorting at all until I'm back home other than copying to my Surface at the end of the day. I also never have that many pictures in one day, I'm pretty sure a counter rolls over every day to restart numbering. I use different prefixes for bodies.

 

[Robert Watcher]

I do happen to use a different prefix for my different camera models - eg. EM1, M10, PL5, PL3 which helps quickly identify files from the different cameras at a glance...

...but being I can easily select all pics from a shoot by camera model or any other variable in Lightroom and show only those ones - that isn’t as valuable to me as making sure the camera dates/times are sync’d.

Before I go on a shoot, I go through each of my bodies and set the time as close as I can to the second so that all files shot will be in the proper order regardless of which camera I used. There is nothing more irritating to me than not being able to figure out what sequence the pics were taken in once the files are imported into my software.

I have had to manually adjust timestamps in software so files follow one another properly - but that is a massive pain. I consider setting my camera clocks to be an essential just like creating 2 to 3 backups of files before deleting a card.

Something the unique card naming does help do, is reduce the possibility of a conflict of same file name from different cameras, stored in the same folder. I never reset the number of my cards. There is nothing worse than having to deal with duplicate file names when saving to a folder and resetting the number to zero, increases the odds dramatically. When importing, ORF is never a duplicate of JPG even if file name is the same, and vice versa.

 

[Lupin 3rd]

I have multiple camera bodies so I name the SD cards accordingly: E-M5, E-M5ii, GX8, X-T2; followed by the capacity 16GB, 32GB, 64GB.

I shoot RAW + Jpeg on all my cameras. I like having Jpeg files because they're easy to transfer to my iPhone for a quick edit and then share with family and friends. I keep the RAW files in case I need to edit beyond what a Jpeg allows. My X-T2 is the only camera with dual slots, I write RAW to the first and JPEG to the second. Consequently the first slot gets a 64GB card to handle the larger files, and the second slot gets a 32GB card.

So my current SD card names are:

• E-M5_16GB
• E-M5ii_64GB
• GX8_32GB
• X-T2_64GB & X-T2_32GB

I've never gotten close to completely filling up the cards. Though when I'm on vacation I'll go through the photos in the evening and delete the ones that just don't make the cut.

Hope this helps!

 

[oldracer]

The idea that all of my travel pictures from a country would reside on a single memory card seems insane to me.

When we travel I carry a bunch of cards, currently eight plus two in the cameras. They are numbered. Every night I take the card out of my camera and exchange it for the next one in numbered sequence, rolling over from #10 to #1 when it comes around. At the end of the trip I have about 1/10 of my shots on each card and loss/theft of a camera or failure of a card can only cost me that much. The cards never go into checked luggage and ideally are carried split between me and my wife, though I have gotten sloppy about that lately. We travel as light as possible, so I do not carry backup hardware or a computer. Another of life's little mysteries for me is why someone would waste time on an expensive trip doing photo editing. Calculate your trip cost on a per non-sleep hour basis and I think that will discourage going head-down to edit.

I have posted this CraigsList advert here before but I think it is worth re-posting:

"I just want you to understand what you took from me.​

​

"You stole a purple backpack out of my pannier (saddlebag) off my bicycle around 6pm on friday, in front of Calhouns Cycles on Hennepin in South Minneapolis. Inside the backpack was my camera and ipod. Please, keep the camera, ipod and backpack. All I ask for is the memory card. I just want the pictures back.​

"The pictures on that memory card are from a three-month bicycle trip that I am currently on. I have ridden almost three thousand miles across the country, and that camera has been through the entire thing. Thats right, 3000 miles, and you just stole every single picture.

"Please, just give me the memory card back."​

​

Craft stores, in the US at least, carry "paint pen" markers that make it easy to number my cards. My wife uses basically the same system except her card are marked with letters of the alphabet.

As far as naming the image files I pay no attention. When I transfer the images into LightRoom I make a trip folder like "2015 Morocco" and have LR sort the images into subfolders by date. So on a two week trip there will be about a dozen "day folders." JPGs and RAWs are distinguished by their suffix. I also pay no attention to which camera was used for an image. That information is in the EXIF and LR can filter for me if for some unknown reason I want to look at images from only one camera. That's the case too for my wife's cell phone and camera images. They just go into the day folders with my stuff.

 

[pondball]

Thanks for the tips so far folks.

I also do very little editing while on a trip... unless the trip is a photo-centric one where there are night sessions on editing workflow on a photo trip. In almost all cases the only edits are of a selective few shots we like sharing with our family and folks back home... and reason I will probably shoot Raw + Jpg this time... in which case they'll get the unedited Jpgs only... saving me both time and frustration at slow transfer speeds from camera to WD drive to iPad. I'll probably use the Oly app and Wifi to drag across only a few jogs I want to share this time around.

All of my trips are for relaxation purposes (get-aways and bucket list checks!)... with thousands of photos thrown in for good measure.
I am a little paranoid about losing photos however and I do carry with me a WD Wifi Passport / SanDisk SSD combo that I use for a double back up every night. So, even if something happened to a single days shoot I would only lose that one days shots... having two backups already on the WD and SanDisk of all previous photos and movies.

While out and about during the day the backups all reside in the hotel room safe along with anything else of value we might not need on the outing that day.

While travelling between spots I will tote one of the backup drives while my wife will have the other (they're both small enough but I usually take the heavier WD – the SanDisk weighs next to nothing!). One of us will have the cards we have already filled in a card wallet, cards locked and noted as 'used' on the label. The empty cards are in the WD drive case, with one backup card with me at all times in case the in camera one fails while out and about.

 

[ThorEgil]

John, Paul, George and Ringo

 

[PakkyT]

I will probably shoot Raw + Jpg this time... in which case they'll get the unedited Jpgs only... saving me both time and frustration at slow transfer speeds from camera to WD drive to iPad. I'll probably use the Oly app and Wifi to drag across only a few jogs I want to share this time around.

This is why I shoot RAW+JPG. It allows me or anyone else to connect to my camera via WiFi and browse the photos and download what we want. Once back home on my computer, I typically only download the RAW files. The +JPG part doesn't really use a whole lot more SD card space. I put a 128GB card in my E-M1 a year ago and I am still shooting onto it without having deleted any photos off the card yet (sort of as another backup of my photos, but also I was testing the card to make sure I got a REAL 128MB and not a faked one).

 

[pondball]

This is probably a stupid question... but I've been through the manual and can't put my finger on where to set my Em1.2 so that the Raw files go to the faster slot 1 and the Jpg go to the slower slot 2. Help gratefully accepted!

I got to where it identifies the slots but it doesn't have an option for RAW, JPG or Video for those slots. I know I've seen it somewhere before but as this is the first time shooting Raw + Jpg and also first time using the 2nd card slot I obviously didn't remember where that options could be set.

 

[stagor]

John, Paul, George and Ringo

wouldn't use John or George if I was you.

 

[WaltP]

1) Do you have specific names for each card?

- Ie. if you’re going on a trip and know you will have three distinct shooting times (ie. Italy, Spain, France) and you want to keep your photos on the cards according to country, regardless of whether they are filled or not, what is your strategy for this type of shooting?

2) What do you do when going on a trip and you know you’re going to be taking more shots than you have left in your 9,999 numbering sequence that Oly allows?

3) if you use two bodies, do you have a different prefix for your images from the one. I do and it seems to help me keep the files separate from each other more easily... also helps in searches in my photo app (EX4)

4) what do you do about naming when you shoot Raw + Jpg
- I haven’t done this yet but am considering doing it on my em1.2 this time around and sending the Raw photos to slot 1 (faster card) and the jags to slot 2
- or would you just shoot Raw and use the 2nd card slot to make instant backups? I’m concerned about lag if I get a chance to shoot some fast moving wildlife so am swaying away from the backup strategy. Whole on vacations I also tote an iPad and a WD Wireless Passport drive that I download my images to, and then back those up to another SanDisk SSD drive I bring along... so it’s not like I need to use the second slot as backup

If this sounds like a dogs breakfast lmk... if it sounds ok lmk... and if you have some tweaks or suggestions I’d also be glad to hear what they are.

Mostly the urgency is in the card naming and file numbering questions

Standard Caribbean naming ceremony like everyone else, but we have made ours a little more American by including hot dogs and apple pie among the traditional foods we serve. As usual, mama and papa choose the saint name, and we add "Created during the reign of (current president)" to whatever first name the eldest maternal aunt chooses. Pretty standard stuff. How about you?

 

[davidzvi]

I don't bother organizing my cards in any real way when on vacation. It's one of the things I use the metadata filters for in Lightroom.

When shooting I tend to use RAW+ on both cards, I don't really shoot anything that would require high FPS and tax the write speed. I prefer working with the RAW files but having the JPeg is handy to share on the road. Next vacation I'm thinking of using a micro SD for JPegs that I can just put in my phone or tablet to review and / or share.

 

[pondball]

So I was playing around with OI.Share to see if I could get it working and the light bulb came on... the SCP has the two slots right there in front of my nose!! ? so I played around a bit and got slot 1 set to Raw and Slot 2 set to fine jpg... took a test shot and checked out the process of OI.Share and contrary to what some have experienced it worked pretty well for taking a quick peak at the slot 2 jpg and importing into Photos on either my iPhone or iPad. Pretty much the way I want it to work.

 

[pondball]

But wait... there’s more... the OI.Share app poked at me and asked if I wanted to use Olympus Image Track...

Took a quick boo but have absolutely no idea why I might want it, but more importantly whether i would get home after a trip and find I had been blessed with a honkin big roaming bill?

 

[Sujiar]

But wait... there’s more... the OI.Share app poked at me and asked if I wanted to use Olympus Image Track...

Took a quick boo but have absolutely no idea why I might want it, but more importantly whether i would get home after a trip and find I had been blessed with a honkin big roaming bill?

In almost all phones these days, GPS is satellite data - it doesn't necessarily use a cellular connection...

 

[AussiePhil]

1) Do you have specific names for each card?
- Ie. if you’re going on a trip and know you will have three distinct shooting times (ie. Italy, Spain, France) and you want to keep your photos on the cards according to country, regardless of whether they are filled or not, what is your strategy for this type of shooting?

Never named my cards and if your backing up to a WD passport drive, completely irrelevant i'd say as it will drop each backup into a dated folder anyway ... sort it out later just keep some notes on your ipad for each day.
The passport handles different cards by dropping them in card folders with unique id's

2) What do you do when going on a trip and you know you’re going to be taking more shots than you have left in your 9,999 numbering sequence that Oly allows?

Let it roll over but be VERY careful when your copying files around, keep them in the OLY created folders if you can till you can sort them out properly.
Must check how the WD passport handles that, does each card inserted day folder have the OLY 10k folders.... mmmm something to check

3) if you use two bodies, do you have a different prefix for your images from the one. I do and it seems to help me keep the files separate from each other more easily... also helps in searches in my photo app (EX4)

Yes - but like someone else mentions keep your clocks within a few seconds... helps when you need those files in time order rather than camera order

4) what do you do about naming when you shoot Raw + Jpg
- I haven’t done this yet but am considering doing it on my em1.2 this time around and sending the Raw photos to slot 1 (faster card) and the jags to slot 2
- or would you just shoot Raw and use the 2nd card slot to make instant backups? I’m concerned about lag if I get a chance to shoot some fast moving wildlife so am swaying away from the backup strategy. Whole on vacations I also tote an iPad and a WD Wireless Passport drive that I download my images to, and then back those up to another SanDisk SSD drive I bring along... so it’s not like I need to use the second slot as backup

do NOT write to both cards at the same time if you want best performance... even just jpg to card 2 will slow the overall buffer clear time down
General holiday snaps not using burst modes then use the cards as dual write.... using burst modes then write only to card1 for max speed.

Mostly the urgency is in the card naming and file numbering questions

As i said above the key will be how the WD passport handles the files in each of the 10k folders.

 

[Stanga]

I don't give any of my cards a name. I just use the default name.
To sort images out, I use DOpus file and folder viewer to arrange and then copy images into folders with relevant names such as the location or event where the picture was taken. DOpus can also read the EXIF data to tell me which lens and camera was used. So I can sort the pictures out into folders by camera model.

 

[jyc860923]

I don't usually name my cards and I often offload the photos to some other storage asap, and I don't care about in-camera naming as long as the ones from one camera don't overlap with the other's.

And I just realised I'm not helping at all.

 

[alex66]

I started using cards once, when backed up putting them in a wallet labelled camera year sequence ie GX80b 2019 1 and so on. A 16gb card costs less than a fiver, a 32 just over, I paid more for the cost of a roll of film plus dev when you could get low cost dev all over the place so it feels a no brainer. Keeping the cards gives me another level of back up.

 

[SkiHound]

I name them alphabetically; Alfred, Brandon, ... Zebulon. I've never really thought about this, actually. I've never named cards in camera. Didn't even know one could. On trips I generally use several cards but I'm not very systematic about it. I don't want all my images on one card. But that's more because I don't want to risk a card failure. I just use two small card wallets; one for unused cards and one for used cards. I copy files to an external device and then put the card into the wallet for used cards.