file management

[davidknibb]

Recently bought a Fuji XT10 .I've still got my Nikon D300 and lenses, but wanted something lighter when travelling.

Generally I'm highly satisfied - but haven't yet found a good way of handling many hundreds of photos - and I guess I'm missing something.

I've discovered how to name photos - even though I don't thik it's in the manual.

But the thing I really like on my D300 - and cannot find on my XT10 is a way to creat new folders as I shoot. 

So I'm in City A - take say 200 photos and they all go into the City A folder

Then I go to City B - make a new folder - and the photos go into this new folder.

Back to City A - and it's easy to make the City A folder active.

and so on for City C,D and etc.

So when it comes to processing several thousand picture on my return - I've already got the pictures all in their correct folders.

I find the post processing selection much more cumbersome and tedious with my XT10

 

Anyone got a good solution - or have I just missed how to creat folders - which is really useful for travel photograpghy ?

Thanks for any ideas

David

[Larry Bolch]

I never rename an exposure—only the folder it is in. The folder name makes it alphabetize in the correct order within yearly folders. An example would be 10.October 01, 2016 - xp1 - Banff, Jasper. Quick to find the correct folder, and Adobe Bridge makes it easy to select and process the contents. Once the folder is transferred and named, it is very well backed up.

 

Then the folder is opened in ACDSee Pro, and all the Banff images are selected and dragged into the Travel→Mountains→Banff category and the same is done with the Jasper shots. Clicking on the category brings up thumbnails of every shot I have ever taken in the mountains. With drag and drop, it only takes a couple of seconds to categorise the contents of the most mixed subject folders. ACDSee Pro has a variety of search functions that will bring up any image from the past decade-and-a-half easily and quickly. Aside from media management, it has many other highly useful features.

[davidknibb]

Thanks for the reply.

I think you are saying that I can create new folders as I proceed ??  If so how - I haven't discovered how to do this on by XT10. And the manual says nothing about this at all.

 

Thanks

David

[Larry Bolch]

No. With my method, there are only new folders created once the current folder is uploaded and backed up. There may well be three or four different subjects included in a single folder. The keywords following the camera identifier allow me to find the folder in the Images→2016 folder, or by subject in ACDSee. It is all about efficiency. I have no interest in becoming a clerical worker, renaming hundreds of files, embedding keywords and captions.

 

Creating multiple folders in the camera, would just slow things down and not make searches any more efficient. I am nearing 150,000 images now after 16 years of digital shooting and can find any specific shot in seconds.

[davidknibb]

Thanks again

I think I'm being dense because I still do not follow what you are doing.

the sentence in your reply "The keywords following the camera identifier allow me to find the folder in the Images→2016 folder," has me confused.

 

At the risk of asking too much - could you give a step by step reply of what you do and how oyu do it.

 

sorry to be thick

Thanks again

[jlees]

Saluti David,

I have come across the same problem

I only have an XT1 but I am sure the XT10 must function in a similar, if not the same way.

The short answer is you cannot create folders into which your photos can be stored as on D300 (which I had). The camera generates its own folders according to the number of images (?)

However you can edit the file name in the set-up menu, check exactly where in the user manual; so I would suggest trying this out before you set off.

Have a nice trip

Jeremy

[Larry Bolch]

I have an "Images" folder. Inside the folder is a folder for each year going back to 2000. Each year, I create a new folder for the images I will take during that year. Logically, at the moment, all my work is copied into the 2016 folder.

 

When it is time to transfer my current files to the hard drive, I use a card reader and copy the whole folder from the card intact into the 2016 folder. I would rename the folder—but not the files within—using the format "10.October 01, 2016 - xp1 - Banff, Jasper"

 

"10.October 01, 2016" forces the files to sort into chronological order in the folder.

- xp1 - identifies the originating camera body. (I have a variety of cameras in order to optimise each shoot.)

Banff, Jasper identifies the locations where the images in the folder were shot.

 

At this point, I back up the folder to at least two other locations including to a fault tolerant RAID array. Once securely backed up, I return the card to the camera and reformat it.

 

Finally, I open the folder in ACDSee—a multi-function application with powerful cataloguing and search functions. It is highly configurable and lets one set up whatever categories are meaningful. Viewing the thumbnails, I will drag and drop them into appropriate categories. Note:the files themselves do not move—the catalogue generates pointers to where they are. They can even be on the network or on removable media. They can also be cross-referenced. While I will drag all the image files into the Travel→Mountains category I can go through them and also drag the shots I took of a grizzly bear mother and her cubs into an Animals→Bears category.

 

Only the files on my graphics machine get catalogued. No need to catalogue the backups since they are redundant.

 

When I click on the Mountains category, I can view and compare every shot I took in the mountains over the past many years. If I want to do a comprehensive web gallery, it offers several ways to rate or tag the shots selected. Once the images are selected, they can be copied to a work drive for processing. No need to ever work on the original files. Once processed into JPEGs, I can open them in ACDSee and tell it to generate a web gallery ready for uploading. 

 

This might sound complicated, but with drag-and-drop, it only takes a few seconds to catalogue a folder. Now I have the options of using any file utility or Adobe Bridge to find an image in a known folder. I can also do a search based upon year, month or date using ACDSee. I can view all related images by clicking on a category. I can also set up a complex conditional search in ACDSee based upon EXIF data along with a range of dates as I wish. 

 

Even with nearly 150,000 image files, I can find a specific image file I need within seconds. Very efficient with all the options I need.

[johant]

What you want cannot be done in the Fujifilm cameras, I am afraid.

Edited October 3, 2016 by johant

[davidknibb]

Thanks to all who recently replied.

It strikes me - unless I still misunderstand - that the method described by Larry requires the photographer to remember where each thumb nail was taken so it can be catalogued.  And that's my problem.

Say I go to Italy - and I'm largely interested in taking photos of churches.  I visit say 10 towns in 2 weeks and take lots of photos of churches in each town.

When I get back home  I want to have 10 collections - each with the photos in a given town.

But I'll never remember when I get back where each one was - so unless I really am missing something I cannot use this method.

 

--------------

 

I find it odd that there is nothng at all in the XT10 manual about in camera file management - and no provision made for it either.  Except the facility to use on my XT10 (and this isn't even in the FUJI XT10 manual)

SAVE DATA SETUP -> EDIT FILE NAME -> s/Adobe/RGB ->EDIT FILE NAME

Once I've chose a name then all pictures will have that name until I change it -(Ie move town in my above example)

Just checked my D300 manual again - and there a good few pages on this stuff.

 

Since file management is so important for serious photography - I wonder why FUJI seem to largely ignore it ??

 

Anyway - thanks again

 

David

[dalto]

Since file management is so important for serious photography - I wonder why FUJI seem to largely ignore it ??

 

I think that the market for heavy on-camera file management is smaller than you might think.  Many people use a tablet or computer for all of their file management tasks.

 

That being said, I know a lot of people like to travel light and this would be inconvenient.  Off the top of my head here is a couple of other ways you might be able to achieve a similar goal.  When entering a town/area/church/etc take a picture of the sign or some obvious landmark.  When you get back to tag the photos sort them in timestamp order and it should be pretty easy to tag them in big groups that way.  Alternatively, you could use the Fuji phone app to geotag your photos to an approximate location.

[davidknibb]

Thanks again. Your first suggestion is what I do already. The second one of using a Fuji Android app I haven't tried because I didn't know it existed. So thanks for that and I'll try it. Is there a specific app you are referring to ?

Thanks

David

[dalto]

Thanks again. Your first suggestion is what I do already. The second one of using a Fuji Android app I haven't tried because I didn't know it existed. So thanks for that and I'll try it. Is there a specific app you are referring to ?

Thanks

David

 

I was thinking of the Fuji app but there may be others as well.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fujifilm_dsc.app.remoteshooter&hl=en

[davidknibb]

Thanks - I tried to geotag app and it seems to work fine.  Hadn't come across this app before - so thanks.

 

David

[Sacher Khoudari]

As it was already said, Fuji does not offer that kind of file management.

 

But there is a workaround that I do sometimes. It is cumbersome and requires a couple of minutes, but it works. Take out the SD-card, put it into any kind of SD-card reader and open it in any device you have. In my case, I have a wifi cardreader (search for Ravpower 5-in-1) and I log into that wifi network with my smartphone or tablet. Then rename the current folder to whatever you want. When you continue using that SD-card, your Fuji will create a new folder and put all new pictures into in. So when you travel from City A to City B, take your time (about 2 minutes I guess...).

[davidknibb]

Thanks for this something else for me to try.

David

[sacherjj]

If you have a smartphone, another alternative is to use the app to push geodata to the pictures.  Now you don't need folders, as you have the data of where it was taken in the file.  I really wish more cameras had embedded GPS for this.

[davidknibb]

Thanks. Yes a GPS is useful and I bought one (rather clumsy) by my Nikon D300.

And I've briefly tested your suggestion on my XT10 and it works well.

Thanks

David

[davidknibb]

Thanks. Yes a GPS is useful and I bought one (rather clumsy) by my Nikon D300.

And I've briefly tested your suggestion on my XT10 and it works well.

Thanks

David

[jlmphotos]

I never rename an exposure—only the folder it is in. The folder name makes it alphabetize in the correct order within yearly folders. An example would be 10.October 01, 2016 - xp1 - Banff, Jasper. Quick to find the correct folder, and Adobe Bridge makes it easy to select and process the contents. Once the folder is transferred and named, it is very well backed up.

 

Then the folder is opened in ACDSee Pro, and all the Banff images are selected and dragged into the Travel→Mountains→Banff category and the same is done with the Jasper shots. Clicking on the category brings up thumbnails of every shot I have ever taken in the mountains. With drag and drop, it only takes a couple of seconds to categorise the contents of the most mixed subject folders. ACDSee Pro has a variety of search functions that will bring up any image from the past decade-and-a-half easily and quickly. Aside from media management, it has many other highly useful features.

 

I never rename, or manually select a folder in camera.  I've seen it happen where a particular folder is imported, and another is forgotten and deleted accidentally.  I let the camera choose the folder. Upon import into LR, I have custom preset that I can leave the filename as is, or rename the shoot as I deem necessary before I import ALL the images off the card into a LR folder titled:  New Uploads.   This "new uploads" is where I go to cull, and edit the new images.  From here, they get selected, as they are flagged, to go to various stock agencies based on content (in collections).  Once that process is finished, I then file the images away.  Of course, nothing gets done until a backup is finished of the fresh, new uploads.  That should go without saying...