Screwy file numbering, is it me or the camera!

[Phill D]

Having had Oly cameras for some time now I thought I knew how the system worked. P then the number with the month designated as the first number up to 9 then A for month 10 B for 11 and C for 12. I'd got quite used to that and not really taken much notice of it to be honest. However, I was out yesterday and on downloading my images I see that files are now designated with an _ then 1 for the month and then 20 for the date followed by a 4 digit number. Ok thinks I maybe that's just something different to designate 2020? BUT I then notice some of the files are actually designated with a P at the start rather than the _ ? So what is going on that I wasn't aware of ? or have I misunderstood the system all along?

[MJ224]

All mine, EM1 ii, EM5 ii start with P followed by 6 numbers, and sometime a PB or another letter in the suffix. The TG-5 does the same. Cannot see any relationship with the time in those numbers. But on Sunday, I used both cameras and the numbering was quite similar. Must a rhyme or reason somewhere....

Just looked at my wifeys photos, she run a Leica Bridge camera, and the photo numbers also begin with P. (Infor on the photos says it was taken with a Panasonic tho')

[MikeOxon]

You can edit filenames in the cogs H1 settings AND there are different prefixes according to whether you use sRGB or Adobe coiour spaces. Underscore is the default for Adobe, so I suspect you have either deliberately or inadvertently changed your choice of colour space (cogs G). I use different prefixes for different cameras so I can identify shots by the camera I used.

(cogs menus as on E-M1-ii)

[MJ224]

You can edit filenames in the cogs settings AND there are different prefixes according to whether you use sRGB or Adobe coiour spaces. Underscore is the default for Adobe, so I suspect you have either deliberately or inadvertently changed your choice of colour space. I use different prefixes for different cameras so I can identify shots by the camera I used.

A whole new thread for this I think. I just have used the default, not understand the difference at all............:-(

[MikeOxon]

Always remember - on an Olympus EVERYTHING is adjustable

I use 'P' for my E-M5 and 'M' for my E-M1

[Phill D]

I resorted to the manual and just found out the colour space difference. Looks like I'd changed it from sRGB to AdobeRGB. Now i did do a few setting changes as recommended by Peter Forsegard in a you tube video over Christmas but I though I'd put them back again as I didn't like them. Maybe one was to swap the colour space and I'd forgotten to reset that one? anyway partly solved as it still doesn't sort out why some of my shots yesterday even in the Adobe RGB space were designated as P? Also anyone care to explain what the colour space setting does?

[MikeOxon]

sRGB is optimised for on-screen viewing and use on the web. Adobe has a slightly wider colour gamut which is optimised for printing

---

(my website is now closed)

[Phill D]

Thanks Mike I'll read your stuff later when I've a bit more time. I think I've spent a bit too long not doing jobs trying to work this out at present

[Phill D]

I think I worked out what was happening. The change to AdobeRGB changed the prefix to _ BUT some of my shots were taken using the in camera HDR1 setting. Something I rarely use but was just trying out with some into the sun shots. Anyway all the HDR shots have the P designation. The file numbers stay consistent but the prefix changes. That made Windows show me the files with the P ones at the end. Solution is to use sRGB. I also noticed that my file numbering was also set to Reset when I thought I used to use Auto. I might change to Auto anyway as I can't see why I'd want to reset the numbers everytime I remove the card. Anyone see a problem with the Auto setting?

[MikeOxon]

I agree - HDR changes a lot of settings that sometimes catch me out

Auto numbering works ok for me.

[MikeOxon]

Just remembered - if you delete files at the end of a sequence, when the card is attached to a computer (i.e. delete using the computer), the numbering will continue from the remaining files on the card. If you have downloaded the subsequently deleted files, you can end up with duplicate numbers. Always best to make changes in the camera.

[Bikie John]

The sRGB/Adobe RGB setting only affects the camera-generated JPEGs, it has no effect on raw files so if you normally process from raw it will make no difference at all.

If you set it to Adobe RGB, the first character of the file name is ALWAYS _ (underscore), and you can't change it. You can change the file name,, but if you do you will lose one of the other characters (month, day-day, 4-digit sequence) all of which are useful. Once I was convinced that leaving it at sRGB had no effect on the raw files I left it there and changed the first character, which by default is P, to identify which body the file came from. This preserves the date and sequence number. I am now up to "H"

I prefer to let the sequence number run on, it just seems easier to find photos that way. I never delete the files in camera, always copy the lot to PC and then, once I have done two different sorts of backup there I reformat the card in the camera. it seems to reliably remember where it was the previous time and carry on where it left off.

John

[Phill D]

Without changing the P that's pretty much what I was doing John before I had a go at changing to try the Peter Forsgard settings at Christmas. I hadn't realised the file name change that Adobe RGB would make. Presumably the HDR mode I was trying out generates sRGB files hence the camera uses the P designation for them. Hopefully I'm back to what I used to use now.

Yes I agree it's best to delete files in Camera too Mike. Just one less complication to have.
Thanks for the help guys fingers crossed all sorted now

[MJ224]

Just had a similar problem of using the EM5 and EM1 on a recent walk. I don't usually have a problem with identical photo numbers, but did last week. In the end I downloaded the photos into separate folders. So having read this thread properly, I have changed the prefix on the Em5, so I can download a days photos into the same folder...

Thanks for the tips..:-)

Ditto with the TG-5..:-)

[DerekW]

I used a process where I would advance the leading letter of the file name at the start of the year or if I had taken greater than 9999 pictures in a year. This meant that that the image files would sit nicely in the directories and give me some year information based on the leading character of the file name. This process worked fine for 17 or so years (from the EM1) until I started to use different custom modes as opposed to P mode. I expected the leading character to be fixed above the changes that would be affected by changing the custom mode settings, but no the Leading character of the file name is defined by the Custom mode. Also I suspect that the copyright fields eg photographer names are also associated with the custom mode settings and not with the camera.
At this point I gave up trying to be clever with the settings.

This with the OMD EM1 Mkii

[Phill D]

I agree Derek I've stuck with the standard configuration too now.