Lightroom: Sort by capture time should use filename when times are equal

Very much agreed.  It would also be great if all camera manufacturers inserted the fractional capture time in the EXIF -- only some do.  Hard to believe that 15 years into digital imaging, some are still not doing that.

Same problem with Olympus OMD EM10 II.

I do a lot of macro shots with focus bracketing. The camera does the focus bracketing to get many shots taken as fast as the camera can shoot. I don't use in-camera focus stacking (combining each pic's in-focus areas). I do it in post. 

The Auto-Stack by Capture Time would be sweet if it would sort properly. My stacks are typically 20 to 50 pictures each. I end up with 10 to 20 stacks, so it's somewhat of a chore to create the stacks manually.

What's worse, once the stacks were created with Auto-Stack by Capture Time (wrong order), I couldn't select them all and unstack. I had to open each stack, select only those photos in the stack, then unstack. But, that didn't work. It only removed one photo from the stack. Turns out you can't select the last, then shift-click the first. You have to select the first, then shift-click the last, then unstack works.

I don't see fractional seconds in the EXIF or IPTC metadata for Olympus raw files.

Lightroom CC 2015.8 build: 1099473
MacBook Pro mid 2015
MacOS Sierra 10.12.3

Perhaps you could upload a sample raw to Dropbox and post the link here?  I'd like to poke in the metadata to see if fractional seconds are hiding anywhere else.

Here are two Olympus raw pics both with time 11:07:31.

Fractional seconds are nowhere in metadata.  Sometimes manufacturers stick it in the proprietary MakerNotes, but not this camera.  (I'm amazed that many manufacturers don't include fractional seconds, and that Adobe still doesn't do a second sort by filename.)

"What's worse, once the stacks were created with Auto-Stack by Capture Time (wrong order), I couldn't select them all and unstack."

Hmm, in my LR CC 2015.8, when I select several collapsed stacks and do Photo > Stacking > Unstack, all of the stacks are unstacked.  Does that not work for you?

Seems to work now. Perhaps I was using "Remove from Stack" (wrongly thinking "Unstack" exapanded the stack?).

Both Unstack and Remove from Stack work now. Not sure how to recreate the problem I had. I'll try it again when I have a big set of pics to try auto stack.

Great.
Flint, let us know if you are able to reproduce the issue.
Thanks,
Sunil

Unfortunately, the Sony a6000 doesn't insert the industry-standard field SubSecTimeOriginal in the pics' EXIF, which records the fractional seconds of capture time.  The recently released a6300 doesn't either.   But Nikons and Canon's generally do insert that field.  This explains why LR properly sorts bursts from your Nikon but not from your Sony.

Of course, I fully agree that, when sorting by capture time, LR should use the filename as a secondary sort criteria, which would improve this situation quite a bit.  (It's not perfect, since the camera sequence numbers will wrap around from 9999 back to 0.)

But you should also complain to Sony.

And still: Lightroom will not let me rename my files containing this subseconds...

Sunil - this folder: https://db.tt/my3OmOim contains two sets of DNG files that exhibit the problem.

Thanks
Mark

Thanks, Mark.
I have sent you an e-mail offline to get some more info.

Thanks,
Sunil

None of those files have the EXIF:SubSecTimeOriginal field, which stores the fractional capture-time seconds.  E.g.

 

I downloaded a couple of sample JPEGs for that camera model from dpreview.com, and the samples didn't have the field either.

Your last two screenshots narrowed down the issue.  (That's the great thing about full screenshots.) The pics were taken with a Sony A7R, and unfortunately, many (perhaps most) Sonys don't record capture-time fractional seconds in the industry-standard EXIF fields. For example, see this thread: http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&&FORUM_THREAD_ID=1305964&order=DESC

As a result, LR often doesn't properly sort photos taken in burst mode in the same second.   

LR could fix this by using the filename as a secondary sorting key when the capture times are the same, but it doesn't.  As a result, the order within a given second is pretty arbitrary.  

This has been a long-standing problem.  (I'm not sure why it worked ok for you before but now doesn't.)

Your main complaint should be directed to Sony for not recording fractional seconds in EXIF metadata.  But LR could easily improve the situation by sorting by filename when the capture times are equal.

John - your summary of the problem hits the Olympus as well. Just for fun at the time I had a look at the file with a binary editor/viewer I don't see any sub second metadata in the files. So Adobe could make many Sony/Olympus/??? users happier by making this small fix. How do we signal them?

Thanks
Mark

This is the right place to"signal" Adobe -- it's the official place to provide them feedback.  Product developers do monitor and participate here.  The number of me-too votes does influence their prioritization, but it's only one factor among many. 

By the way, you can view all the metadata in a file with the free Exiftool.  

I downloaded a number of sample Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II raw images from dpreview.com and verified that the camera isn't adding the fractional seconds to the capture time (as allowed by the EXIF standard and implemented by many manufacturers).  This aligns with the observation of Mark Levison above with his (unspecified) Olympus.  So:

1. File a bug report with Olympus.  In 2017, there's no reason any camera, especially a $2,000 camera, shouldn't record fractional seconds.  (Sony is also guilty.)

2. It would be trivial for LR to use filename as a secondary sort key when sorting by capture time. This would handle the common case of sorting bursts properly.

Also, in Library, do View > Sort > File Name to sort the images by filename rather than capture time.   If you're applying a custom renaming template, be sure to include the original file number in the new filename.