Here’s the first of what will hopefully become a few more useful tips for photographers…

After I shot my first wedding I quickly discovered how annoying it is to not have the camera times in sync across the multiple cameras used at a wedding. I met up with my Maili, my second, before the wedding with time set aside to sync our cameras, but in the midst of dealing with a flash issue, we’d forgotten to do it. I didn’t notice the problem until it was time to start editing and too late to do anything about it.

Lesson learned, but syncing time through the camera menus can be tedious and If you don’t do it before the shoot starts it’s too late. Here’s a quick tip I learned to avoid the problem.

Instead of taking time to sync each camera time manually, start the day by picking one “primary” camera and taking a picture of the “Set Clock” screen on that camera with the rest of the cameras that might be used during the day. This gives you a time reference on each camera so that you can sync time after the wedding.

Here’s a shot from Maili’s of the time on my camera at one of last year’s weddings. We try to shoot these right a the beginning of the shoot so they’re easy to find. If you forget though, the beauty of this technique is that you can always get that shot later and still sync everything. Oh, and don’t forget cameras used by second shooters and backup gear that may or may not get used.

Once the photographs from the shoot are downloaded and imported into Lightroom, pull up all of the photographs from the shoot in the Library and go into Grid view.

In the “Library Filters”, click on “Metadata” to open the Metadata filter panel. If all of your cameras are different models, then you can use the “Camera” filter to select the camera to be adjusted. If you’re using more than one of the same camera, then you’ll need to switch one of the filters to “Camera Serial Number” by clicking the header and choosing from the menu.

Here I’ve filtered down to all the files from Maili’s camera.

Luckily, the time reference picture is the first on in the grid view, so it’s easy to find. Open it and make a note of the time that’s showing on the back of the camera. In this case it’s 11:56:52.

Now, go back into grid view and select all the images from the camera you need to adjust with Command-A (or Control-A on a PC). Make sure that the image with the time is still the primary selection, go to the Metadata menu, and select “Edit Capture Time”.

In the dialog that opens, make sure that under “Type of Adjustment” you keep “Adjust to a specified date and time”. When you use this option with multiple files selected, Lightroom will shift all of the other files by the same amount that you shift the first file. This way we’ll fix all of the files from this camera in one batch.

Here you can see that the capture time in the file is 11:59:32, but in the time on the other camera is showing 11:56:52. Maili’s camera was about 3 1/2 minutes ahead of mine.

In the “New Time” section, edit the “Corrected Time” to match the time shown on the camera in the photograph. Here I’ve entered 11:56:52 into the “Corrected Time”. When you click “Change”, Lightroom will calculate the difference and move all of the other files selected by the same increment.

Repeat this process for the rest of the camera bodies you need to sync and you’ll have an accurate chronological view of the wedding for much easier editing. Remember, you’re syncing the other cameras to the one that you used as the time reference.

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