Synchronize the timestamp on multiple cameras is best done before. Every six months or so I take all my digital SLR camera settings and sync the clocks in them. This is important because if you have multiple cameras on a photo shoot as a wedding, you can sort the photos by the time they were taken would so you the client a series of photos that are organized from start to finish can give. If the time stamp of your cameras are turned off, this can be very annoying in post because you see images is out of order. This is strengthened, the more your cameras are not synchronized.
Well, none of us are perfect and I certainly don’t claim to be! I recently shot a wedding with my good friend Cliff Baise and I totally forgot to synchronize our cameras before. When I have photos on my computer to start editing it all together I was frustrated because I wasn’t seeing any of my images in Lightroom. Everything was sorted by time as it always has and I double checked everything. Well, it turns out that our cameras were a full hour in sync with my camera is one hour ahead of Cliff ‘s. So were not my photos appear in the timeline until much later in the marriage. This was pretty nerve racking because I hadn’t come across this problem before. I’ve always synced my own cameras (my wife usually shoot with me and my other main camera used) so I have never had to deal with. I just out of luck. So I started rummaging through the menu options in Lightroom and eventually devised a way to sync the two cameras very fast and very easy. Here’s how to do it:
At some point during the day of a wedding or every shoot it is likely that the two shooters took a picture at the same exact time (or dang close to it). This doesn’t have to be an exact, down to the mili-second thing … they should just close. For this marriage I found a shot that Cliff took me a picture of the bride show off her boots. Perfectly. All I had to do was find the picture that I took at that time.
The first thing you have to do is the first picture you find by clicking on the select mode in the library. Then scroll down to the other image from the second camera on a Mac, hold down command (control on PC) and click on that one too. This will select both images at the same time. Now press the ‘ C ‘ key on the keyboard that the two images in compare side-by-side mode. Once in the compare mode, you can back and forth between the two images to see the EXIF information on the right. Again, all this should be done in library mode, mode does not develop.
On the right side in the EXIF data, you will see the time recording. This is how you tell if the images turned off at all. Just click back and forth between the two images and see how the time is changed. If they are off by more than a few seconds, it’s time for the next step.
This part was the first time a little tricky. Go ahead and write down the exact times of each picture on a piece of paper or type it somewhere on your computer. Note the time with each image correlates.
Now you need to decide which set of images that you want to synchronize. In all honesty, it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. Nobody cares what time the picture was taken, they just need to be in order of when they were taken. So I have chosen to match the time Cliff’s images of my images. I could have gone around the other way and gotten the same result.
To sync the time stamps, select all images in the camera that you want to adjust. This will be easy if you place them in separate folders. If they all are mixed in the same folder, you can sort by file name in library mode and then the images will be separated. If the images from a camera in their own folder, just hit A command on a Mac (a control on PC). This will select all photos. If the images are mixed with another camera in the same folder, separate them by file name, select the first image of the camera you want by clicking on the correct, then scroll down to the last image of this camera, hold down the SHIFT key and click on the last image.
Now that you have selected all the images that you want to repair, amount to metadata in the top menu and go to Edit Capture time. When the window pops up, you do not need to update the time is under the section ‘ new time ‘. The original time will on top so just plug in the time that you wrote down the right camera in the section ‘ Corrected ‘ time.
Once this is done, it is important only double check everything and make sure that you do everything correctly. It says at the bottom of the window that you cannot undo the operation so no errors! Once you are sure you are all right just click on change and you’ll be done! You should now have the images from both cameras in library mode select, sort on time and see all the images in chronological order.
As I said in the beginning, it is much easier to do this right the first time by the cameras for the shoot synching. But if you ever forget this like I did, to be able to do in Lightroom is a life saver!
James Brandon is a photographer based in Dallas and a lover of iced tea, Chipotle and his wife Kristin (but not in that order). You can find it on his website, his photo blog, on Google + or on twitter at @jamesdbrandon.