It’s easy to forget to keep your camera’s time set properly. This quick tip will show you the importance of syncing the time on your cameras, and will help you fix it in Lightroom in case you forgot to.
The Importance
If you’re a wedding or event photographer, you probably know about the importance of getting the camera time right. Shooting with multiple cameras or second and third shooters is great for increasing the number of images you capture. But if the time code on these images is wrong, editing can be a real headache as your shots can be wildly out of order.

If you're involved in shooting with multiple cameras or assistants, always put “sync cameras” on your to-do list before starting the day. This will help to address the problem before it begins. But what if you’ve forgotten or are editing for others?
Syncing in Lightroom
If you didn’t set the time correctly in-camera, you can easily correct the problem in Lightroom. The program makes it easy to adjust all of your incorrectly timed images at the same time.
Step One: Calculate
To get started, first load all of your images into Lightroom. Next, you’ll want to step back and calculate how far off your images are if you don’t already know. If I’m editing a wedding, I find two “reference” images that are clearly taken at about the same time (like during a wedding) and then calculate how far apart in time they are.

Step Two: Filter
After you determine how far off the two cameras are, you'll want to select the incorrectly timed images. For this, I use the Library module's filter. Usually, my second shooter and I have two different cameras, and I'll select just his images to correct. I filter to the images shot by his camera and then select all images in that set.

Step Three: Correct
After you've selected the images that need correction, the Library module has an easy option to correct the time. To open the option, choose Metadata > Edit Capture Time from the menu. A window will pop up with several options for time correction.


Wrapping Up
Having the correct time in the image's metadata is a must when you are editing multiple camera setups. If you've forgotten to set the time in your camera correctly, this fix in Lightroom is easy to implement.
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