Naming conventions?

[RayTheRat]

Since signing up for this travelling circus (meant in a nice way) I've found that there seems to be a basic difference in the way (in a sweeping generalization) that people in the USA and everybody else (or so it seems) name their files, and I'm making the leap of assumption that it also means the way image files are stored in individuals' databases or photo collections or whatever.  Here's an example pulled from the first file I came across in one of the "Solved" sections:  BMW 502 Cabriolet Autenrieth - 1956  This seems to be what I think of as the "European naming convention" although it's probably more than just that.  The way I'd name it (as I've learned since I was old enough to differentiate one marque from another) is 1956 BMW 502 Cabriolet Autenrieth or in my own derived "shorthand" 1956 BMW 502 Cabriolet 01 (Autenrieth) 01.jpg

The last one is just to help keep my image files from duplicating (I don't care for using "jpg" and "jpeg" as ways to avoid duplicate file names since I always display file extensions); I put the coachbuilder in parentheses as part of the "shorthand" way of listing it.

The biggest difference is where the year of manufacture goes.  I put it at the front of the name (as do many of those from the US) while others out it at the end.  I prefer sorting by oldest to newest (sort by "year", ascending) but it appears that others sort by marque.  (I use ACDSee, since it's what I've been using for photo management since...well, since a LONG time ago.)  Since I have a subfolder for each marque, I already know that all the files in the folder (using the example above) are BMWs and that sort is superfluous. 

The question is, does anyone have any reason for naming cars/files with the year at the end?  Is it really a European thing?  Enquiring minds [sic] can be a pita.     And so can retired software/database developers. 

Thanks for any input...now I'm gonna go out to my garage and work under my race car...there's a lot to do before it goes back to the salt flats in September.

[gilescooperuk]

Hmm Ray that is one of the biggest can of worms you could open.

I use Apple's Aperture software to keep track of a 29000 photo library (not all car pictures it has to be said).

Everything is stored in projects under folders i.e. there is a root folder for car shows and under that is one for each year.
Then under the folder individual events are stored as projects with the date (yyyy-mm-dd) and then the event name.

This might seem rather crude until you go a bit further.
Each project is tagged with the location of the pictures, and then the individual pictures have multiple metadata descriptions allocated to them.
Mostly cars are tagged with manufacturer, model, registration number, and description.

Due to the database that Aperture uses a search through all the photos for a particular item will take less than a second - provided I remember to set the metadata on the file when I import them.

The bigger problem is I have just bought a 7D (moving from a 40D) and the raw files are a lot larger than I am used to. Even the JPEGS are almost as big as the RAWs from the 40D...

[RayTheRat]

If nothing else, I can relate to the filesize issues moving from a Canon 40D to a 7D...and then to a 5D.  I killed my 40D (apparently) last year on the salt flats; it'd been my secondary camera with the 7D as the primary.  Then a friend made me a killer deal offer on a 5D and it was too good to turn down.  Yeah, the raw file from those cameras are huge.  So I mostly shoot in jpg...unless I have a special need for the additional "depth" of the raw format. 

My "database" is on a Windoze system, so it's a little different, but I use ACDSee (several different versions for different tasks) and a program called "WhereIsIt" that does the same type of searching you describe.  I don't have nearly as much metadata defined and the search program has to be manually updated...it's not a real-time update.  So I set it to run overnight to index and create thumbnail images of my 150,000 image database...and that doesn't include any of my own shots of sports car racing, land speed racing nor car shows, etc.  I shudder to think how many images that would add.

One of these days I've got to get organized.   

Btw, I decided to try something new with my 7D this year.  I bought a spotting telescope with a dslr adapter.  It ranges from 22 to 66 power magnification.  Since we (salt flats photographers) get moved back farther and farther from the racing surface every year, this might help me get some shots of motorcycles that are otherwise just little dots with a 400 mm lens, even with the 7D's 1.6 factor, creating an effective 640mm focal length.  That's roughly 32x magnification, so I should be able to get a little more...if I can keep the subject in the frame as I pan along, trying to follow something running at 200 mph+.  Otta be an interesting year.