Odd frame numbering issue - a99

Hi all,

I've just been looking through my most recent images taken a couple of weeks ago whilst on vacation and on importing to LR I noticed the order of the images was, to out it mildly, 'All over the show'.

I thought it was an issue with LR but, on closer inspection, it appears it is 'correct' in how it is importing the files but the file numbers themselves seem all over the place and not in the 'correct' order.

HAs anyone seen this before? I have been having some odd issues with the card (it's becoming difficult reinserting it into the card slot, though another card is fine) or is it a problem with the software on the camera itself?

Any thoughts etc. most welcome as it's rather confusing to see this in action!

Thanks and best regards, Neil.

Hi Pieter,

No - it's not a 'reset' issue (experienced many of those over the years!); the latest went from an 02xxx to an 06xxx number. Importing into LR should be set to ascending number order (I will go and check!) but this seems random as well - the latest series starts towards the end of the day, goes through to the close of the day then restarts from the morning images! The images in the folder are in the 'correct' time stamp order so I'm not sure what is happening here.... And yes; I think a discarding of the card is called for; it's been through a lot of images (being the card I had when I purchased the camera!).

Thanks for the reply and best regards, Neil.

Neil, you can also set Lightroom to sort by capture time. That would save you renaming all the files.

It's in the library view, the bar just above the film strip at the bottom. If you don't see it click on the little triangle at the right and make sure "sorting" is selected.

Maybe a dumb question, but has the card been re-formatted using the in-camera menu?
That will erase all traces of old image files and re-set everything.
If after re-formatting, the image counters of photos taken are still all over the shop, bin it.

Thanks all - I'm of the view to 'bin it' as so effectively described by Joe. It's had numerous reformats in camera (each time it's used in fact) and, with the problems of getting it to fit into the card slot (which doesn't occur with other cards I have) then I think it's time for it to go to that happy photographic site in the sky (no; not Flickr....).

best regards, Neil.

Thanks everyone for the advice - I have just purchased a replacement card (so cheap now - even for one with a better spec. than the one I seem to be having problems with. I will return to this post should this not fix the problem!

Best regards, Neil.

overeema wrote: This indeed is how the Alpha software is designed (I remember from a course back in 2008). The recommendation is when you insert another card, to always change to a new folder. The camera starts counting from the highest number in the current folder. If that folder is empty it continues from the last shutter release. The foldername xxxMSDCF has a 3-digit number in it, starting from 100. So in total you can have 7 digit unique identifiers before the camera wraps around. When you use the same card alternatingly in multiple bodies, you can still have duplicate names in LR. Nikon seems to have a solution for that: it allows you to change DSC0 in the picturename DSC0xxxx into a unique camerabody identifier. I do these renames manually in postprocessing with a bulk rename utility. After each wrap around I change DSC0 into DSC1, DSC2, DSC3, etc en for my NEX body i use NEX0, NEX1, etc

The newer Sony cameras (ok, from the A-mount lineup, only α99 II is new enough) do offer this option to change the filename prefix. And personally one of the first things I do with any new camera is to set the folder name format to be date-based, that makes it fairly easy to collect each days' photos into single directory. The only caveat there is that you have to note that the first three characters of the folder names on a memory card are sequential numbers rather than the actual first three numbers of the current year, but such replacement operation is fairly trivial. And of course, the filenames may still conflict if your cameras do not offer that prefix editing option. And of course, there can be filename conflict also if you manage to shoot more than 9999 shots on a single day, but I think that is fairly tough task and most people probably won't take that many pictures on one day.