Naming my DCIM subdirectory; charging camera, updating firmware

Hi!

I have a point-n-shoot Samsung WB35F**, an impressive little thing with
so many features. It's amazing.

I take most of my pictures when on vacation, and during and at the end,
I copy them to a laptop (and when I get home I back up the laptop to the
desktop which I back up to the backup. )

In the past, each year I renamed the directory in use or just created a
new, empty directory under DCIM which I named 101Photo, maybe
103Photo-2018 or 104photo-2019, and the next set of pictures got stored
there, in the new directory. But I don't know why.

Because the directory had the latest date, because it was empty, because
its name was sort of similar to 100photo? Those are my only three
guesses.

?? Why?

It matters because I'm starting to get confused by how many pictures
there are.

What about a subdirectory under a directory under DCIM. Will it use one
of those?


Can I assume all Samsungs do it the same way? That other brands do it
the same way?

It doesn't talk about this in the manual. I suppose one could use the
same directory until the SD card is full, but it's been working okay so
far.

**two of them actually because I liked the first one so much and I'm not
smart enough to learn the directions*** for two different models, so I
bought a second one used.

***Or even all the directions for one model. The manual is 140 pages!!!

2) Somewhere I read that I shoudln't let the battery charge too long.
Is that a real problem? (IIRC the red light turns green when it's fully
charged, but if I'm not careful I'm out of the room.)

3) The camera I bought used, which might have been made before my first
one, wants to update the firmware which is currently v01.60. I think
it's working fine now. If I follow all the directions, fully charged
battery, USB charging without interruption, is there any risk to that?

V01.85 is the newest firmware for this camera.


Thanks.

On 1/1/20 11:19 PM, micky wrote:
Hi!

I have a point-n-shoot Samsung WB35F**, an impressive little thing with
so many features. It's amazing.

I take most of my pictures when on vacation, and during and at the end,
I copy them to a laptop (and when I get home I back up the laptop to the
desktop which I back up to the backup. )

In the past, each year I renamed the directory in use or just created a
new, empty directory under DCIM which I named 101Photo, maybe
103Photo-2018 or 104photo-2019, and the next set of pictures got stored
there, in the new directory. But I don't know why.
Because the directory had the latest date, because it was empty, because
its name was sort of similar to 100photo? Those are my only three
guesses.

?? Why?

If you drag and drop (or copy, or move) the photos from your camera to
your computer, you can put them anywhere you want. Obviously, you should
put them someplace logical, such as MyPhotos2019, or Vacation2019, etc.


It matters because I'm starting to get confused by how many pictures
there are.

What about a subdirectory under a directory under DCIM. Will it use one
of those?


Can I assume all Samsungs do it the same way? That other brands do it
the same way?

It doesn't talk about this in the manual. I suppose one could use the
same directory until the SD card is full, but it's been working okay so
far.

Page 109 of the manual explains this.

**two of them actually because I liked the first one so much and I'm not
smart enough to learn the directions*** for two different models, so I
bought a second one used.

***Or even all the directions for one model. The manual is 140 pages!!!

2) Somewhere I read that I shoudln't let the battery charge too long.
Is that a real problem? (IIRC the red light turns green when it's fully
charged, but if I'm not careful I'm out of the room.)

Page 118 of the manual says the charging time is 150 minutes; 2.5 hours
for the math-challenged. Page 120 says that overcharging the battery may
shorten battery life. It probably says this to reduce the number of
lawsuits. Since the camera can sense when it fully charged, leaving it
connected a few hours longer will probably not hurt.


3) The camera I bought used, which might have been made before my first
one, wants to update the firmware which is currently v01.60. I think
it's working fine now. If I follow all the directions, fully charged
battery, USB charging without interruption, is there any risk to that?

V01.85 is the newest firmware for this camera.

Updating the firmware may add or enhance features. Since the camera is
wifi enabled, the update may improve network security.
Or it may brick the camera.



Thanks.



--
Ken Hart

In rec.photo.digital, on Thu, 2 Jan 2020 09:48:22 -0500, Ken Hart
wrote:

On 1/1/20 11:19 PM, micky wrote:
Hi!

I have a point-n-shoot Samsung WB35F**, an impressive little thing with
so many features. It's amazing.

I take most of my pictures when on vacation, and during and at the end,
I copy them to a laptop (and when I get home I back up the laptop to the
desktop which I back up to the backup. )

In the past, each year I renamed the directory in use or just created a
new, empty directory under DCIM which I named 101Photo, maybe
103Photo-2018 or 104photo-2019, and the next set of pictures got stored
there, in the new directory. But I don't know why.
Because the directory had the latest date, because it was empty, because
its name was sort of similar to 100photo? Those are my only three
guesses.

?? Why?

If you drag and drop (or copy, or move) the photos from your camera to
your computer, you can put them anywhere you want. Obviously, you should
put them someplace logical, such as MyPhotos2019, or Vacation2019, etc.


It matters because I'm starting to get confused by how many pictures
there are.

What about a subdirectory under a directory under DCIM. Will it use one
of those?


Can I assume all Samsungs do it the same way? That other brands do it
the same way?

It doesn't talk about this in the manual. I suppose one could use the
same directory until the SD card is full, but it's been working okay so
far.

Page 109 of the manual explains this.

Wow. I was wrong. It is in the manual. You even gave me the page
number.

I get it now. I never use the camera to look at old pictures. Once a
young friend did it, even showed an array iirc, with my camera in front
of me and I was amazed, but I didn't try to learn. And I see that as
long as I'm using software on the PC it doesn't matter what the
directories are called.

And I guess it puts new pictures in the directory whose name is
alphanumerically last, which wasn't one of my 3 guesses. But at least
I was making new directories with names alphanumerically higher.

**two of them actually because I liked the first one so much and I'm not
smart enough to learn the directions*** for two different models, so I
bought a second one used.

***Or even all the directions for one model. The manual is 140 pages!!!

2) Somewhere I read that I shoudln't let the battery charge too long.
Is that a real problem? (IIRC the red light turns green when it's fully
charged, but if I'm not careful I'm out of the room.)

Page 118 of the manual says the charging time is 150 minutes; 2.5 hours
for the math-challenged. Page 120 says that overcharging the battery may
shorten battery life. It probably says this to reduce the number of
lawsuits.

Oh, good.

Since the camera can sense when it fully charged, leaving it
connected a few hours longer will probably not hurt.

Double good.

On the first recent trip, I had 3 batteries going. Tried to recharge 1
of them at night inside, and once or twice, I took so many pictures I
ran down the second one and recharged it with a car charger, so I'd have
two charged ones.


3) The camera I bought used, which might have been made before my first
one, wants to update the firmware which is currently v01.60. I think
it's working fine now. If I follow all the directions, fully charged
battery, USB charging without interruption, is there any risk to that?

V01.85 is the newest firmware for this camera.

Updating the firmware may add or enhance features. Since the camera is
wifi enabled, the update may improve network security.
Or it may brick the camera.

Ooh. I haven't used wifi yet. Anything new will get tried out on the
first camera and if I ever want to do the saem thing on the second
camera and it won't do something important, I'll think about updating
the firmware then.

OTOH, the second camera (with the old firmware) has worked fine for 9
months, turned it on 20 or so times. Last night for the first time, I
pressed On and nothing happened. Pressed several times, then let it
sit in front of the monitor. 3 hours later, the lens came out and went
right back in. Then it worked fine again, until today. Similar
problem, wouldn't turn on, until after about 10 tries.

Maybe newer firmware would help?


(The first camera has never given me any problem in one or two thousand
pictures, even though I dropped it once on something pretty hard.)



Thanks.