How to handle scanned images from the past

[Smorton]

Greetings,

I hope this questions has not been answered a ton of times. I want to scan in all my old slide and negatives and import into LR. The date will not be correct.

Is there a best practice for something like this. What if you don't know the date, but just the decade? Like the 1980's?

Thank you for any input.

Smorton

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

I just put the date in the title and/or the folder and do not try to change the date/time original/captured. You CAN change it I think.

But you hit on a key problem -- I'll see shots and have no clue when. What I found (bad practice in some ways) is I usually had multiple things on a roll. I am adding a keyword to each image with its roll number (a random number as I pull in to digitize) since I will file the originals by role. Then I break up the shots by subject into separate folders in a staging area, e.g. "Hawaii Trip". The more I find and look through, and in some cases look on the back of prints (if I find them - often stored separately) I can attach dates, so it becomes "Hawaii Trip 1988". THEN I look at the roll number, and go back to all the other shots for that roll, and I have an approximate date for those as well.

I'm finding that when I started all this I had a lot of unknowns, but over time as I got more and more digitized and partially identified (and with some over-the-shoulder time from my wife) I am starting to figure out the rest. I am sure some will be left behind, but my suggestion is to do it in stages, save them in a staging area by subject before filing by date (if you are going to file by date).

And... when it is all done, I'll take my best guess since who's going to know the difference anyway.

 

[Smorton]

Thanks for the input.

Smorton

 

[AMG]

You CAN change it I think.

Yes, indeed you can
Library module, metadata, edit capture time. I've done the same with all my scanned slides and negatives. For the really old stuff where I have no clue of the exact date I just pick 01-Jan-yyyy 00:00:00.
Better than having date digitised 08 May 2015.

 

[LouieSherwin]

There is a great plugin Capture Time to EXIF that is designed for exactly for this situation. Since it uses ExifTool you can update any EXIF metadata in the image file. There is an example how to add some specific camera and lens data if you want.

-louie

 

[Smorton]

Thanks for the help.

Smorton