Time Sync

When I have a second photographer working with me I need to know that I can synchronise the time camera time stamps between their camera and mine.

This is particularly important for shoots such as theatre photography where I produce slide shows of images and I need to be able to quickly order all the images from the two camera in chronological order. It looks really odd in a slide show if you show images from a sequence out of order. For example imagine two photographers photographing a section of a play where someone walks across stage, stands next to a chair then sits down. If the camera time stamps are out even by a just a few seconds the sequence might run in correctly and look very odd: Person stage right (Cam 1), person stage left standing by chair (Cam 1), person centre stage (Cam 2), person sitting (Cam 1), person standing by chair (Cam 2), person sitting (Cam 2).

The way I solve this is at the start of the shoot myself and the other photographers to take a sync shot. Basically we point cameras at each other and take a photo on the count of three. In post production, in Lightroom, I look at the difference in time between the two shots and then adjust the time stamp on one set of images by that amount. By doing this all the images will be in the correct sequence when ordered by “time taken”. Problem solved.

Today’s POTD is a time sync shot that I took of Graham who was shooting alongside me for the Stockport Garrick production of Girls Like That.

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This photograph is (c) Ian M Butterfield. All rights are reserved. No use Is permitted (including non-commercial use) without prior permission. If you wish to use any of my photographs please ask first.

Image Reference: FG0225A-G03029