300D & 20d File Names

Hi guys, I about to upgrade to a 20D from a 300D and will be using the 300D as a second camera, to use and abuse.

The question is how do I manage the files, do both camera use the IMG_xxxx file name or is the 20D different. I also relise that if I just put my CF card into the 20D the pic count will start at where my 300D finished, and that would mean that my first pics from the 20D will start around the 8000 mark and I would like them to start from 0, to enable me to keep track of how many pics have been taken.

Short of using separate CF card in each camera, can anybody shed any light on my problem.

Yes, the names wil be the same. You'll have to keep separate cards; the only alternative is to set one of the cameras to "reset numbering". With separate cards, make sure the card for the 20D is completely blank (formatted in computer or files deleted in computer) before loading it into the camera. When you do an in-camera format, the next folder to be used is created, based on whatever the last folder the camera heard about was, and as soon as you insert a card with a pre-existing folder in it, the camera knows about it.

What I do is keep separate subdirectories on my computer for each camera, and rename the files to include the camera model at the end. I also have separate card caddies for each camera; one of these days I'm going to get around to colour-coding the cards for the specific cameras, too.

Afterthought: If you set one camera to use Adobe RGB and the other to sRGB, the Adobe camera will have files named _MG-xxxx.*. You don't want to do this unless you're shooting RAW, but it'll make it harder to get things confused where frame numbers overlap.