It's a New Year!

It may not mean much - only 24 hours from this time in 2020.  But it is a big deal.  Mentally.

For the paying job, lots of good projects to keep me going through 2021.  I don't see much that will take extra weekend time.  That's good.  Will be able to get out more.

For photography I do have a few things for New Year's Day that need to be attended to.  Administrative stuff.

First, I have to change all my copyright information from 2020 to 2021.  I have a simple copyright statement set in the camera.  I also have a more elaborate statement in Photoshop.  I usually add the statement from Photoshop on my posted shots, but just in case I forget the camera statement will do.  And you would be correct in rolling your eyes at this point, yep if they're going to lift it the copyright won't stop 'em.

I also change my camera file names every year.  A few years ago I needed to come up with a method to segregate photos taken from different cameras.  Without using more directories.  I can set the first three characters in my file names.  This is what I came up with.  The first character is the year.  A=2018, B=2019, C=2020 and E=2021.  Yep, I skipped D.  One of Nikon's default file names begins with DSC.  I have plenty of older files that begin with DSC.  The second character corresponds to the event of the year.  The first event I go out to in 2021 will be A.  The next event will be B.  And the last character will be the camera, 5=D500 and 8=D850.  For each camera, that would be EA5 and EA8 to start the year.

I also reset the four digit values to start the year.  I haven't had to reset the counter during the year, but am not opposed to doing so.  I can see later in the year if I've gone to a few air shows and knocked out a few thousand shots at each that I might do a reset.  Not sure I'd take well to the camera doing a reset on its own.  Ha, and yes - I do think about it at that level.

I also take the time to check and update the firmware in the camera.  

In early December I saw both cameras had updates available.  For both the big update was for both cameras to accept CFexpress data cards in the XQD slot.  Theoretically a CFexpress card is faster than XQD - but at speeds that my cameras can't use.  And the price at this time is not any different.   But XQD is primarily a Sony thing and fairly proprietary.  The CFexpress may be more non-proprietary.  And I live by that.  So, won't be throwing away the XQDs just yet.

Other updates fix a flash issue on the D500, which I don't use, and menu changes in the D850.

So now that all that is done, the cameras are ready for 2021.  And so am I.  Bring it on.