Xjyuk

Me and my wife both like to go out photographing. We usually have only one DSLR/MILC with us, so we take turns in taking pictures. (Rarely if we have multiple cameras at hand they usually have different lenses on them and we also swap when we like it)

Recently a friend of us asked who took some of our photos and we realized a lot of the times we don't really know. Sometimes we can figure it out, like if one of us is in the picture then we know it was taken by the other, or we can check whether we took photos using our mobile phones - as that usually means the other had a go with the DSLR.

I'm wondering if there are any easy to use mechanisms to track who is using the camera somehow. We have a fairly similar shooting style, and use most of the features of the camera. The best I could think of is using the C1 and C2 dials, which is a fairly simple switch, doesn't need too much extra book-keeping, and hopefully we can get the data out of the EXIF afterwards while post-processing. However we do use the C1/C2 presets occasionally, so this would limit us a bit. Also this doesn't work for Video mode which we're also using frequently.

The camera in question is a Sony A7-II, but I'm happy to hear about methods that (only) work on other cameras. I'm also wondering if there are any cameras out that might support this out of the box.

There isn't really any surefire way, other than meticulous bookkeeping, or following consistent habits.

Some ideas:

1. Use your mobile phone to take images of the rear LCD info page showing the file name for the first and last image each of you take each time you operate the camera. For instance, if you take a dozen pictures, when you're done shooting for a bit or if you handoff the camera to your wife, before it leaves your hands, take a picture of the info page for DSC12345, and another for DSC12357.


2. Use the notes or dictation feature on your phone to take a quick memo of the first and last filenames you shot in a sequence. (This is just a variation on the first suggestion).


3. Whenever you start to shoot anything, first take a picture of your left hand. Similarly, your wife would do the same. Presumably you can the difference between your and her hands. Then when you're organizing the images later, you'll just know that every picture following your hand was taken by you, until there's a picture of her hand. Etc. ...


4. Probably the easiest is for you to each carry your own memory cards, and just swap cards in and out when you hand over the camera. This has the potential to add a bit of wear-and-tear to the card slot, but professional photographers usually do a lot of card swapping themselves, and things usually work fine. Since the Sony a7-II has an SD card slot, you could use MicroSD cards, and keep the MicroSD-to-SD adapter in the camera as a "prophylactic" for the camera's card slot.


5. Finally, and this goes along with the previous point: I don't know about Sony cameras, but I know Nikons can save and restore custom settings from the memory card(s). One of the custom settings is Photographer, which gets written to each image's EXIF data. So you and your wife could each set the Photographer custom setting (assuming Sonys allow that), and restore the settings each time you put your own card in the slot. That way, if you're consistent, each image would have the correct Photographer field.

Nikon D3400 (and, I assume, other models) lets you select the active folder to store files in. Just change folders when you change photographers.

More generally, you can use two memory cards and change cards when you change photographers.