First Nikon annoyance

I was afraid of this, so I’m real­ly real­ly glad I checked before copy­ing every­thing to my hard drive.

My old Kodak DC120 kept track of the num­ber of pho­tos it had tak­en and num­bered the pho­tos based on the sequence. You could take three pic­tures on one CF card and they’d be named P00001, P00002, and P00003. Swap cards out and take anoth­er pho­to and it’ll be called P00004. This makes per­fect sense to me. After all, the point of sequenc­ing the file­names is to ensure unique file names.

I went out shoot­ing today and I filled up my small­er card, so I swapped in a larg­er one and con­tin­ued shoot­ing. I got home and start­ed copy­ing pho­tos to the hard dri­ve for sort­ing. Once I’d got­ten the pho­tos on the first card copied, I put the oth­er one in my SD read­er. In the direc­to­ry that holds the pho­tos, there they are, a bunch of pho­tos with sequenced num­bered file­names. Start­ing with DSC_0001.JPG.

Arrgh. This means that I will nev­er be guar­an­teed unique file­names. I’ll have to put my pho­tos into dif­fer­ent direc­to­ries, even when they’re all part of the same shoot, unless I want to rename them. And I shot 275 pho­tos today. You know how much fun renam­ing those is gonna be? What bone­head thought this fea­ture up?

OK, so it’s a pret­ty minor flaw, but it’s mighty inconvenient.

[EDIT– OK, I found the fea­ture in the man­u­al. It can be turned on and off in one of the cam­er­a’s “advanced” menus. My bad for not read­ing the man­u­al more com­plete­ly before going out and shooting.]