The Date & Time On My Camera Don’t Matter

Okay, let me admit it right at the beginning:

I never set the clock on my camera.

There. I said it.

Daylight Saving Time Defused

Germany has just switched to daylight saving time and like Groundhog Day, there is yet again a flurry of Tweets, blog posts, Facebook posts and YouTube videos reminding you to set the clock in your camera. Twice a year. Again and again. Ad nauseum.

Add some travel into the mix and, unless your camera has a fancy GPS and sets its own time, the repeated clock setting starts to become a real chore.

But you know, to be honest, I’ve had the clock in my cameras set to the wrong time for over a year. Not because I’m lazy (well, okay, there’s a little bit of that) but also because I keep forgetting. I travel to a different time zone, I meet with other photographers, daylight saving time just descends upon me, I’m distracted, I simply forget to change the time and date on my cameras.
Continue reading “The Date & Time On My Camera Don’t Matter”

Seven Steps To Reclaim Valuable Disk Space By Cleaning Up Lightroom Orphans

Here’s a method to reclaim valuable disk space by deleting orphaned RAW files that Lightroom accumulates over time.

Lightroom LogoIf you’ve been using Lightroom for a long time, chances are you have accumulated a lot of orphan files. Those are RAW files that still exist in your pictures folder, but that your Lightroom catalog (the database) doesn’t know about.

During the import of your photos, Lightroom adds a lot of information about the images to its catalog. The file name, all the EXIF data like shutter speed, aperture and ISO, the location of the image file on your hard drive and more.

Orphans accumulate over time because when you try to remove a file from Lightroom, it’s actually quite easy that instead of removing the image file, you remove it from Continue reading “Seven Steps To Reclaim Valuable Disk Space By Cleaning Up Lightroom Orphans”

1 Hour 1000 Pics – Lightroom Pro Tip: Find Out Which Pictures Aren’t In A Collection Yet

I’m really happy that so many people feel that what I address in 1 Hour 1000 Pics is as essential as I feel it is: learning to make confident and good decisions about the vast amount of pictures in your library.

If you want to bring your library of uncategorized images on board, this one is for you.

In Chapter 11 (Importing Pictures) I explain how you put photos of individual events into separate collections as a starting point for boiling them down. The one thing that would make that much much easier was if you had a way to identify the pictures that are not in a collection yet.

Unfortunately Lightroom doesn’t have an easy way to do that, but here is a workaround that works well:

1. Create a Smart Collection, I named mine “Not in a collection”
2. Set up the filter rule like this:

Not in a collection

Now whenever you open that collection, it will show you all the pictures that are not in a collection just yet, making it that much easier to know which files still need work and which ones don’t.

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