Canon EOS-1D X Mark II Rumored Features [CR1]

[winglet]

I fall into the camp of - as part of the Import/Sort workflow - batch renaming photos with something slightly descriptive, the date of capture from EXIF, and a sequence number. This is denigrated by the likes of Neuro for being a waste of time, with the powerful indexing available on PC's.

I'm trying to understand how this is more time-consuming than tagging everything with keywords and the like? Is renaming not just another word for tagging? I certainly don't sit there typing up names one at a time. I tried using tags, but then I ended up curating a massive cloud of descriptors - they're not much use for filtering if you have several tags for the same thing. So not exactly a time-saver.

I don't rename them to help find them, I rename them to give a hint as to what the event was, much like one would write a caption on the back of a print back in the day. It's enormously helpful when trying to recall the subject content a single image contains, without having to put it into software just to see how its "tagged".

I also keep them roughly organized in a plain old hierarchical file/folder structure with some logic. Again, not so I can navigate to a file by drilling down into a file structure - but that IS a backup method. If you just allow your files to place by the whim of your OS, where do you start to look if Spotlight can't find something?

Operating systems change, file formats are rendered obsolete, search algorithms are constantly tweaked, and I don't have total faith in any machine logic. But then, I fly airplanes for a living and simplest is invariably best for anything remotely mission-critical.

 

[Loswr]

I fall into the camp of - as part of the Import/Sort workflow - batch renaming photos with something slightly descriptive, the date of capture from EXIF, and a sequence number. This is denigrated by the likes of Neuro for being a waste of time, with the powerful indexing available on PC's.

They can be placed in a folder with a descriptive name (you're putting them in a heirarchical folder anyway), the creation date is displayed by the OS in a column, and the files already have a sequence number. What does renaming each file add, except time to the workflow?

I'm trying to understand how this is more time-consuming than tagging everything with keywords and the like?

A batch rename is probably no more time consuming than keyword tagging. In fact, I do neither – I do geotag, and let the face recognition do its thing.

I don't rename them to help find them, I rename them to give a hint as to what the event was, much like one would write a caption on the back of a print back in the day. It's enormously helpful when trying to recall the subject content a single image contains, without having to put it into software just to see how its "tagged".

The content hint is the enclosing folder – Ice Skating, Christmas Portraits, etc. Do you really find it faster to browse through / look for images in the OS-level browser vs. an image library manager? I certainly don't.

I also keep them roughly organized in a plain old hierarchical file/folder structure with some logic. Again, not so I can navigate to a file by drilling down into a file structure - but that IS a backup method. If you just allow your files to place by the whim of your OS, where do you start to look if Spotlight can't find something?

Of course they're organized hierarchically, not by the 'whim of the OS'. Images are stored as referenced files in the manager. That's just common sense, the benefit is obvious (e.g. Apple has stopped supporting Aperture (although it still runs under El Cap, it'll break at some point).

 

[tpatana]

Never could have imagined that my suggestion for Canon to add couple extra digits on the file name would become multi-page argument, and especially how many people are against it.

Still not sure why people oppose the idea, since it doesn't take anything away from any other method. It's zero negative effect on anyone who doesn't care about the numbers. But it's good help for many people who like to have sequential numbering. So why be against it? Just because you're supposed to be against change?

 

[tpatana]

Never could have imagined that my suggestion for Canon to add couple extra digits on the file name would become multi-page argument, and especially how many people are against it.

Still not sure why people oppose the idea, since it doesn't take anything away from any other method. It's zero negative effect on anyone who doesn't care about the numbers. But it's good help for many people who like to have sequential numbering. So why be against it? Just because you're supposed to be against change?

If you don't rename and store your images hierarchically by date, then what do you do if your camera gets sent to Canon for servicing/repair and rather than repair your camera, they send you back a new one that has shot fewer images than you have, so that the next picture you take has a filename that you've already got?

Or what about when you drop your camera in the ocean, buy a new camera and now you're faced with completely overlapping number sequences? Or even just upgrade your camera...

So why be against it? Because seeking to have long running numbering on files is seeking to rely on the camera to give meaning to the name of the photograph when it should be you that gives meaning to the image name, not the camera.

Lol, aren't you keen on finding ways why it wouldn't work in some extreme cases.

And to comment your last chapter, again I'm not telling you to stop renaming your files. I'm not taking anything away from you, you can keep doing your stuff regardless. Why you want other people not have their thing they might like?

 

[kaihp]

If you don't rename and store your images hierarchically by date, then what do you do if your camera gets sent to Canon for servicing/repair and rather than repair your camera, they send you back a new one that has shot fewer images than you have, so that the next picture you take has a filename that you've already got?

Or what about when you drop your camera in the ocean, buy a new camera and now you're faced with completely overlapping number sequences? Or even just upgrade your camera...

It's going to be exactly like today, with four digts.

To take your argument down the Reducto ad absurdium route: why not just have a single fixed filename? you can always rename it later.

 

[kphoto99]

I fall into the camp of - as part of the Import/Sort workflow - batch renaming photos with something slightly descriptive, the date of capture from EXIF, and a sequence number. This is denigrated by the likes of Neuro for being a waste of time, with the powerful indexing available on PC's.

They can be placed in a folder with a descriptive name (you're putting them in a heirarchical folder anyway), the creation date is displayed by the OS in a column, and the files already have a sequence number. What does renaming each file add, except time to the workflow?

Not really directed at you Nero, but I wanted to add my 2 cents.

I rename my files with this command:
exiftool -r '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S_%%f.%%e IMG*.CR2

This makes sorting in chronological order of pictures taken with multiple cameras very easy, this way I have a unique name for each photo from any camera taken on any card.

 

[Loswr]

We went on a family trip to Switzerland and France last year. There were five of us, with four of us taking pictures using a total of nine cameras (1D X, EOS M, two P&S, various iDevices). Several different default naming schemes, EXIF-based chronological re-naming wouldn't have helped (at least, not without first batch-adjusting the date/time for some camera sets).

Putting them all in an event-named folder in a chronological folder hierarchy means that at the OS level I can easily find all the photos from the trip. In Aperture, I can find them the same way, or by clicking on a map if, for example, I wanted all the pics from Paris. I can display by faces within the folder to see all pics of my older daughter, or search by camera within the folder to find all pics taken by my older daughter. If I choose, I could keyword-tag the pics, but I don't see the need as a touchpad-swipe through the thumbnails makes it easy to spot all the pics of the Eiffel Tower.

The point, as I stated previously, is that with the tools available today, the names of individual files really don't matter.

 

[tpatana]

...
Lol, aren't you keen on finding ways why it wouldn't work in some extreme cases.

Extreme cases? Plenty of people buy new cameras and then there are those that shoot with more than one.

And then there are cell phones. Almost every single cell phone sold these days is also a digital camera and they all save their images in IMG_XXXX.JPG format.

Renaming files allows me to have a unique filename across all of my imaging devices - phones and cameras combined - in a single directory name space if I so desire. I can go to a party, use my Canon camera, Panasonic, Sony and Apple devices, all to create images that I import later into the same directory and because they all get renamed, I never have to worry about an image from one overwriting an image from another. If I don't rename then either images get overwritten or I end up with "IMG_0342(2).JPG" or some such.

And to comment your last chapter, again I'm not telling you to stop renaming your files. I'm not taking anything away from you, you can keep doing your stuff regardless. Why you want other people not have their thing they might like?

Think of it as a sign post. If a person got to a point where having a 2nd image named "IMG_0123.CR2" is going to cause them problems then my expectation would be for them to sit down and think if the way they're managing their files is the best. But it is just that, a sign post. People are free to ignore it and continue on. You've got 10,000 images, find me all those taken in summer and at sunset?

How does the saying go? You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

You're really something, aren't you. Simple reason: It's trivial easy for Canon to add, it helps X% of the people who use Canon, it it has 0% negative impact on people who don't need it.

Can you please already answer the one simple question there:

What negative impact would be for you if Canon had 6 (or 8) numbers instead of 4? Give me one reason why anyone should object on this change?

 

[Loswr]

...
You're really something, aren't you. Simple reason: It's trivial easy for Canon to add, it helps X% of the people who use Canon, it it has 0% negative impact on people who don't need it.

Can you please already answer the one simple question there:

What negative impact would be for you if Canon had 6 (or 8) numbers instead of 4? Give me one reason why anyone should object on this change?

Simple - it won't work.

The file format used by cameras on the cards (FAT/FAT32) does not support filenames longer than 8 characters.

Here's the question you're really asking:

"So that I don't have to rename my image files, can the international spec for the storing of image data on memory cards be changed to support longer file names?"

You're as right as you usually are. The first four characters in the default name – IMG_ – are absolutely inviolate and cannot ever be altered. Ever. Somehow I managed to change them on my 1D X, I guess my camera is defective.

 

[tpatana]

...
You're really something, aren't you. Simple reason: It's trivial easy for Canon to add, it helps X% of the people who use Canon, it it has 0% negative impact on people who don't need it.

Can you please already answer the one simple question there:

What negative impact would be for you if Canon had 6 (or 8) numbers instead of 4? Give me one reason why anyone should object on this change?

Simple - it won't work.

The file format used by cameras on the cards (FAT/FAT32) does not support filenames longer than 8 characters.

Here's the question you're really asking:

"So that I don't have to rename my image files, can the international spec for the storing of image data on memory cards be changed to support longer file names?"

FAT/FAT32
Max. filename length
8.3 filename with OEM characters,
255 UCS-2 characters when using LFN

Other stuff you think you know but we should correct?

 

[tpatana]

...
You're really something, aren't you. Simple reason: It's trivial easy for Canon to add, it helps X% of the people who use Canon, it it has 0% negative impact on people who don't need it.

Can you please already answer the one simple question there:

What negative impact would be for you if Canon had 6 (or 8) numbers instead of 4? Give me one reason why anyone should object on this change?

Simple - it won't work.

The file format used by cameras on the cards (FAT/FAT32) does not support filenames longer than 8 characters.

Here's the question you're really asking:

"So that I don't have to rename my image files, can the international spec for the storing of image data on memory cards be changed to support longer file names?"

FAT/FAT32
Max. filename length
8.3 filename with OEM characters,
255 UCS-2 characters when using LFN

Other stuff you think you know but we should correct?

"When using LFN".

LFN support isn't required. Why do you think all of the binaries that Microsoft ship as part of Windows conform to the 8.3 filename syntax?

From wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#FAT32

As with previous file systems, the design of the FAT32 file system does not include direct built-in support for long filenames, but FAT32 volumes can optionally hold VFAT long filenames in addition to short filenames in exactly the same way as VFAT long filenames have been optionally implemented for FAT12 and FAT16 volumes.

To add to this, the question becomes:

"So that I don't have to rename my image files, can the international spec for the storing of image data on memory cards be changed to support longer file names and all camera prices be increased by at least $10 to cover the patent licensing fee to Microsoft?"

When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

 

[Loswr]

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Lol. Things work differently in dilbertland.

 

[tpatana]

...
When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Every time I pick up my Canon digital camera that I bought after the year 2000.

They still can support long file names, for some reason they don't use the option.

 

[tpatana]

...
When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Every time I pick up my Canon digital camera that I bought after the year 2000.

They still can support long file names, for some reason they don't use the option.

That reason is because the software in the camera doesn't support it.

How many times do people say "I don't want to pay for XXXX feature because I don't use it" on here?

This is a perfect case of that - either the camera would be more expensive or Canon's profit per camera would drop or some other feature would be excluded to cover the cost of including this for many people that don't use it or don't care.

So you know for a fact that the feature would cost extra? Do you also know how much?

I also demand that the LAN-port must be removed from 1DX2, since I'm not using it. I refuse to pay for a feature I don't need.

 

[tpatana]

...
When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Every time I pick up my Canon digital camera that I bought after the year 2000.

They still can support long file names, for some reason they don't use the option.

That reason is because the software in the camera doesn't support it.

How many times do people say "I don't want to pay for XXXX feature because I don't use it" on here?

This is a perfect case of that - either the camera would be more expensive or Canon's profit per camera would drop or some other feature would be excluded to cover the cost of including this for many people that don't use it or don't care.

So you know for a fact that the feature would cost extra? Do you also know how much?

Some references:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/8269265213/microsoftisfat

http://www.howtogeek.com/183766/why-microsoft-makes-5-to-15-from-every-android-device-sold/

Notably the first article says this:

To help licensees implement the FAT file system, Microsoft will also provide certain reference source code and test specifications as part of the licensing package in both licenses.

I'll leave it to you to work out the meaning of that.

Did you read that? For one, the article was 12 years old. And it says camera manufacturers need to pay 25 cent per camera for up to 250k per manufacturer (I guess Canon sells more than that). It didn't say anything about needing to pay extra for long file names, but even if it were double, I'd be ok to chip in that extra on my cameras.

 

[Loswr]

I'll leave it to you to work out the meaning of that.

Did you read that?

Yes, but he didn't understand it, which why he wanted your help to work out the meaning.

 

[Don Haines]

...
When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Every time I pick up my Canon digital camera that I bought after the year 2000.

Does anyone know of a camera that does not use 8 character file names? Every one that I have ever had or used (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, Apple, GoPro, Panasonic, and even Kodak), from 1994 to present, has had 8 character file names....

 

[3kramd5]

...
When was the last time you used computer that supports only 8+3 file names?

Hello, dilbert, 80s is calling.

Every time I pick up my Canon digital camera that I bought after the year 2000.

Does anyone know of a camera that does not use 8 character file names? Every one that I have ever had or used (Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, Apple, GoPro, Panasonic, and even Kodak), from 1994 to present, has had 8 character file names....

Ah, the beauty of standards.

 

[IgotGASbadDude]

This is a perfect case of that - either the camera would be more expensive or Canon's profit per camera would drop or some other feature would be excluded to cover the cost of including this for many people that don't use it or don't care.

This reply reeks of desperation . . . ??? :-\ :-[

 

[Jack Douglas]

Well, after a few day's break I decide to take a peek.

I really shouldn't say this but I think I've figured it out finally. This, after driving my son at high speed to the airport at 4:30 AM (late) because ............ There are certain people you might as well not try to reason with, at least at certain times, cause it gets you no where and is simply a waste of time.

Jack