Shoot met meerdere camera's, van chaos naar orde

Friday 1 July 2022, 15:30 by Dick Holtman | 4,067 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Ever photographed a wedding with multiple cameras and discovered after importing the photos that the kiss appears in different places on the timeline? This blog is for photographers who work with multiple cameras and want to synchronise the timelines easily.

Preface

It is a challenge to get photos taken with multiple cameras into the correct chronological order afterwards. After all, you do not want to see the bride and groom's kiss in three different places on the timeline.

This is a shortened version of the blog "Synchronising with multiple cameras or GPS that I wrote in 2015.

This solution uses Adobe Lightroom. HOWEVER, the principle can be applied generically!

The problem

The clocks on different cameras are never synchronised, so the timeline of the photos is incorrect. A few years ago, my daughter went to Moldova with a youth group. They had a wonderful time together while helping the people in that country.

It was incredible how poor some of them were, and still are. Most of the young people had brought a camera. Once they returned, all the photos were collected.

Then came the disappointment. All the photos were completely mixed up chronologically.

Every camera has its own naming system, so sorting by name will not work. Some people still had their camera set to winter time.

Others had replaced the batteries, causing the camera to think it was 1 January 2000. Professional photographers will recognise the problem when doing a shoot with multiple cameras and/or multiple photographers.

The challenge

How do you get all the photos into the correct order easily?
When making films, they use the familiar clapperboard.


By רונאלדיניו המלך - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
I cannot see young people taking a clapperboard with them and using it on their holidays, and using one at a wedding would also intrude on the festivities.

Simple solution

Fortunately, there is a much simpler way to get photos from multiple cameras into the correct order, namely by taking a photo with each camera of one and the same time source.

You can use a smartphone for this, as long as it shows the time including seconds.

You then adjust the time for each camera in Lightroom. You can do this as shown in the video below.

Advantages of this method

• You are not dependent on your camera's time settings. Unfortunately, not all clocks always run at exactly the same speed, and I have often discovered afterwards that the camera was still set to winter time.


• You can also do it afterwards. It does not have to happen during the shoot. If you forgot to do it at the time, that is not a problem.

There are of course other methods. I have used several, but the simplicity of this solution and the fact that you can still synchronise everything afterwards are decisive for me. Everyone has a smartphone these days.

What you need

With this method, you can use things you probably already use all the time, namely:

1. A smartphone that displays the time in seconds.
   The key to the solution is that you take a photo of that one time source with each camera. If your smartphone does not show seconds, you can use my Synctime web page.
   
   
   
   
2. A programme that allows you to correct the time afterwards. I always use Lightroom for this, as shown in the video.

Workflow in Lightroom

Watch the video above to follow everything step by step.
Here is the summary:

1. Select all the photos from one camera


2. Find the photo of the time source and make it active.
   In Lightroom, this is visible from the extra white border


3. Correct the time of the photo based on the time shown in the photo.


4. Repeat this for every camera

Extra tip

Sort all the photos after correcting the time and rename them with a name followed by a sequence number. Because the sequence number increases, the photos will also automatically be sorted in the correct order on a computer or USB stick.

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