Adding keywords, while I am shooting, on-the-fly?

[puffo25]

Hello, I am a professional photographer. I have
already a Canon EOS 1D Mark III and a Canon EOS 5D mark II with various lenses.

I need now system to help me automatically or semi-automatically to add, during my photo reportage and massive capture images on-the-spot, to add some basic annotation/keywords to each single image, in order to reduce the post-processing keywording, which is indeed a very huge waste
of time and money!

I came today across the Canon EOS 7D Bar Code Body/Transmitter WFT-E5 a Kit and I was wondering is someone can offer me a solution to match my need, either with this camera body or
elsewhere-.

(see: Rob Galbraith DPI: Canon now shipping EOS 7D kit with barcode reader support)

So I am contacting you because I will also need an application (either a software or hardware) to help me to create on the spot, while I am shooting my photo reportage, the specific barcode for each
given image. I was wondering if you are aware of any solution commercially available?

I hope I have made myself clear. Again I need a system to:

1. point and shoot first
2. than record automatically or semi-automatically some info about each specific image
3. save it into the exif file for ultimate harvesting, improvement, later on (post processing).

Waiting for your kind feedback.
Puffo.

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[davebmck]

I don't know of any such device, but even if there was, you would still have to input the data you want saved to it. Have you ever looked at Lightroom? You can add keywords at import or later by selecting a group of images and entering the keyword for the group at the same time. I would say this would be faster than what you are trying to do with the external device.

[puffo25]

Dear Davebmck,

thanks for your reply. What I really need is a solution to automatically embed into my EXIF file, for any new picture taken during my field trip, couple of keywords. Those keywords are essential to reduce the editing work afterwords.

When someone shoot 1000+ daily, it is easy to forget where some images have been taken or so on. This is why, being able to add immediately into the digital file couple keywords, will help me a lot. Doing that afterwords in Lightroom or Aperture is fine, BUT I do need a solution to add at least couple of key elements into the pictures, on the fly, while I am shooting.

[err_ok]

The D700 has image commenting built in, it's just a shame that you can't setup keywords etc and switch between them easily it's a bit a pain and I never use it in its current form. I'm hoping this will improve in the future

As for your problem, Canon are the ones 'quietly' shipping these modified 7D's, have you talked to Canon and found out if they also ship modified versions of your camera's?

[puffo25]

Dear Err_ok,

thanks for your remarks. My whole equipment is Canon EOS based so switching to Nikon could be done ONLY if I find a tremendous innovation not available at Canon.

I am not sure that the D700 is the best beat for me because first I am Canon only based (yet) and also because not sure if this D700 can record my keywords on the fly, while I am shooting a new image, and save them into the exif file....

As I mentioned in the link below: (Rob Galbraith DPI: Canon now shipping EOS 7D kit with barcode reader support) Canon has a bar code reader support modified unit -EOS 7D, but I do not think that a bar code alone is really what I need.

I need a system to capture those keywords on the fly.... So I think I still have to find a proper solution. Right? :-(

[GeneralBenson]

Some cameras like the d700 and 1dmkIII have voice tagging that will embed into the .xmp sidecar file, but it's still just an audio file, not a meta tag. Voice recognition software is pretty accessible at this point, it would be awesome to see the two combined so that you could voice tag images, and the camera would transcribe it onto the file as a keyword metadata tag. Hopefully we'll see that soon.