Help needed with RX10-iv workflow (4 Viewers)

[andrewsheerin]

I've just upgraded from the Panasonic Fz-2000 to the RX10-iv and am currently in the "is this magic!?" phase of discovery with the camera. It's miles ahead of the Panasonic in every realm ... APART from workflow, by which I mean sorting through images and getting them off the camera. I'm hoping some of you experienced folk might be able to help or at least share with me how you manage this process.

To be specific, Panasonic had a feature that allowed you to favourite or star certain images. I got relatively adept at skipping through photos, zooming in, checking sharpness, favouriting if necessary and then clicking onto the next. When it came to selecting images to transfer, it was then pretty easy to just multi-select those images with a star. Added bonus of this feature is I could select 'delete all non-starred images' from a card and I'd be left with a record of decent shots without the chaff which I could then safely archive.

Sony as far as I can tell has no such feature. I've tried just transferring everything from a session to my phone and sorting through images on my phone but this is hugely inefficient as I can easily shoot 300-400 images in a session and this takes around 45 minutes to transfer. While the images transfer I have to just stare at my phone because if I click away onto another app or the phone sleeps, the whole transfer gets cancelled. Then doing the initial sort through 400 images on a phone is not as quick as on a camera because of the lack of physical controls.

Before you tell me to just stick the memory card into a laptop and use lightroom, I'm very resistant to involving anything other than my phone. The enjoyment of bird photography is mainly in being out and about and the act of capturing images; I don't want to turn this hobby into a desk-sitting operation that requires a computer that gets me fretting over pixels. Staying on the phone is a way for me not to get obsessed with detail and means I keep things light and mobile. Plus sharing etc. is then a breeze.

Thanks in advance for reading and for your help!

P.S. Bonus points: why is the sony image transfer app so terrible? I didn't think it could be worse than Panasonic's offering but wow...

 

[Andy Hall]

I've just upgraded from the Panasonic Fz-2000 to the RX10-iv and am currently in the "is this magic!?" phase of discovery with the camera. It's miles ahead of the Panasonic in every realm ... APART from workflow, by which I mean sorting through images and getting them off the camera. I'm hoping some of you experienced folk might be able to help or at least share with me how you manage this process.

To be specific, Panasonic had a feature that allowed you to favourite or star certain images. I got relatively adept at skipping through photos, zooming in, checking sharpness, favouriting if necessary and then clicking onto the next. When it came to selecting images to transfer, it was then pretty easy to just multi-select those images with a star. Added bonus of this feature is I could select 'delete all non-starred images' from a card and I'd be left with a record of decent shots without the chaff which I could then safely archive.

Sony as far as I can tell has no such feature. I've tried just transferring everything from a session to my phone and sorting through images on my phone but this is hugely inefficient as I can easily shoot 300-400 images in a session and this takes around 45 minutes to transfer. While the images transfer I have to just stare at my phone because if I click away onto another app or the phone sleeps, the whole transfer gets cancelled. Then doing the initial sort through 400 images on a phone is not as quick as on a camera because of the lack of physical controls.

Before you tell me to just stick the memory card into a laptop and use lightroom, I'm very resistant to involving anything other than my phone. The enjoyment of bird photography is mainly in being out and about and the act of capturing images; I don't want to turn this hobby into a desk-sitting operation that requires a computer that gets me fretting over pixels. Staying on the phone is a way for me not to get obsessed with detail and means I keep things light and mobile. Plus sharing etc. is then a breeze.

Thanks in advance for reading and for your help!

P.S. Bonus points: why is the sony image transfer app so terrible? I didn't think it could be worse than Panasonic's offering but wow...

Hi,
I had this camera up to 2 years ago and don't recall any particular difficulty. I would send the keepers to my phone and bulk delete the rest. What aspects of the Sony image app do you find poor?

Andy

 

[MelospizaMelodiaFan]

I'm an Olympus shooter, but my current workflow is to review all the photos in camera via the LCD screen, writing down the numbers of the keepers, and then copying them off the memory card on my laptop.

 

[njlarsen]

I am opposite. I always transfer the lot to a PC using a card reader and only start judging quality once I have it there.
Niels

 

[MelospizaMelodiaFan]

I am opposite. I always transfer the lot to a PC using a card reader and only start judging quality once I have it there.
Niels

My computer is pretty slow. The camera can open the image 10x faster, so it makes a significant difference when reviewing thousands of images.

 

[andrewsheerin]

Hi,
I had this camera up to 2 years ago and don't recall any particular difficulty. I would send the keepers to my phone and bulk delete the rest. What aspects of the Sony image app do you find poor?

Andy

This is ideally what I'd like to do but I find it onerous the way I'm going about it which is:

• On the camera, dig into the burst stack, flick through, zooming in and out, check if there's a keeper
• Transfer individual or whole stack to phone
• Go to phone, open app, click "start", click "approve", wait for transfer to complete ....
• Move onto next stack, repeat

It would make a lot of sense to do all the reviewing-on-camera in one go, then transfer the ones I want. But if I've taken even 5 or 6 short bursts of a single bird then it's hard to keep in my memory which one(s) were worth transferring so doing it that way round is nearly impossible. Plus when you bulk transfer, you can't zoom into an image to verify it's the right one and from a thumbnail view I can have 50+ images all looking pretty similar.

 

[andrewsheerin]

I'm an Olympus shooter, but my current workflow is to review all the photos in camera via the LCD screen, writing down the numbers of the keepers, and then copying them off the memory card on my laptop.

Not a bad workaround! But I'd love to know if there's anything I can do that doesn't involve having to scribble down numbers on a piece of paper and then search for them when transferring. The star feature on the panasonic was essentially the digital version of this and I could easily star several images a second by doing this - kind of vital when you've had a 1000+ shot day

 

[MalR]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you want, but if you take a burst of shots and then ungroup them when you look at them on the LCD screen, press the function button. This will bring up a screen Send to Smartphone. Scroll down and select Multiple Images. Scroll through the images and press the centre of the rear dial to select each image you want to transfer. Once they're all selected, press the Menu button and you will get the option to Execute (i.e. send them to your phone) or Cancel.

Malcolm

 

[andrewsheerin]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you want, but if you take a burst of shots and then ungroup them when you look at them on the LCD screen, press the function button. This will bring up a screen Send to Smartphone. Scroll down and select Multiple Images. Scroll through the images and press the centre of the rear dial to select each image you want to transfer. Once they're all selected, press the Menu button and you will get the option to Execute (i.e. send them to your phone) or Cancel.

Malcolm

That's what I've been doing, but it's really horrible and slow. Each time I transfer an image I have to go over to my phone, connect, accept, wait, then go back to the camera and move onto the next set of photos to repeat. Is there a way of keeping the connection "open" to my phone so I can just hit "send to phone" button as and when I come across keepers? That would help.

 

[MalR]

I can't see any other way of doing it other than the one I outlined in my previous reply, which as you say is what you're already doing. I don't actually use this function myself. I tend to just delete on the camera any groups of images that are obviously no good, then I transfer the rest to my computer when I get home and go through them there. Sorry not to be of more help.

Malcolm

 

[Swissboy]

I am opposite. I always transfer the lot to a PC using a card reader and only start judging quality once I have it there.
Niels

Same here. I need the larger screen to feel comfortable in judging.

 

[andrewsheerin]

Thing is, I don't really enjoy the process of weeding and editing. I definitely don't like anything that chains me to my computer any more than I already am 9-5. Doing everything on my phone keeps things light and portable and enjoyable for me. I appreciate I seem to be in the minority here so it's not much of a surprise that workflows are not optimised for my use case