Camera creates new folder after every 999 images. How can I change that?

Question

I have a Nikon D3300 and ample amount of space on its memory card. However I have noticed a pattern that it creates a new folder after reaching 1000 images in one folder.

For instance, DSC_001 to DSC_099 in one folder and then the following images in a seperate folder. How can I make it save everything I shoot in the same folder? I have looked all the settings on the camera and still cannot figure it out.

The problem it creates is that when I copy the photos to my laptop, the previous set of 999 images have the same name as the new set of photos that I take. For this reason I have been unable to save all the related images from one day/trip/event in the same folder on my computer.

UPDATE: 1. I pop the SD card from the camera and use inbuilt card reader on my laptop to transfer images. 2. In the new folder that the camera creates, the images start from DSC_000 to DSC_999 making it impossible for me to save all images in 1 folder on my laptop.

Can someone help me? Thanks.

Answer 1

In your cameras reference manual, page 249, the menu setting "file number sequence" is described:

• On

When a new folder is created, the memory card formatted, or a new memory card inserted in the camera, file numbering continues from the last number used. If a photograph is taken when the current folder contains a photograph numbered 9999, a new folder will be created automatically and file numbering will begin again from 0001.

• Off

File numbering is reset to 0001 when a new folder is created, the memory card is formatted, or a new memory card is inserted in the camera. Note that a new folder is created automatically if a photograph is taken when the current folder contains 999 photographs

So, if you set this to "On", your photos will be numbered continuously up to 9999, spanning folders. (Unfortunately, only 4 significant digits are available)

There is no setting to put all photos in one folder (probably because of performance problems on FAT file systems), but this will help solve your problem of duplicate file names.

Answer 2

The simple fix for anyone with basic computing skills is to rename the files after the transfer. Here is a simple Bash script which renames files using the folder as a prefix.

#!/bin/sh

for d; do
    for f in "$d"/*; do
        mv "$f" "$d"_"${f#$d}"
    done
done

So for example, given DSC_001 and DSC_002, if you saved this script as photorenamer, you would run it like

sh ./photorenamer DSC_001 DSC_002

and it would rename DSC_001/image00001.jpg to DSC_001_image00001.jpg, and DSC_002/image00001.jpg to DSC_002_image00001.jpg, etc etc.

Traditional Windows CMD is much more horrible to write a simple script for, but Powershell should be roughly on par with what you can do in a Linux shell, albeit rather more verbose. (Maybe also notice the differences between different Unix shells; this is simple enough that it should work on any Linux or Unix-like system, but understand that it might require tweaks if you try to run it on the command line in a shell which isn't POSIX-compatible.)