Optio S5n

Hi. I have an oldish but dependable Optio S5n. Recently all settings were reset by accident and the file numbering system has started again at IMGP0001. This is a bit of a pain as all the recent photographs saved on my PC are now out of sequence with the older ones when sorted in file number sequence. I can't see a way of manually altering the file number on the camera to set set it back to the desired range of IMGP5001. Does anyone know of a way or hack to do this? Many thanks.

Can't help with the camera settings, all I can suggest is re-naming the files once on the PC.

To be honest you don't have that level of control in the top-of-the-range SLRs so I doubt it's do-able in one of the Optio series. Not that there's anything wrong with Optios, it's just not a common feature on any compact camera.

Thanks guys. It would be easy to batch rename the files from a DOS command prompt e.g. ren IMGP0***.jpg IMGP3***.jpg to get them into approximately the correct range, but it's a bit of a pain to do this every time I drop them on to my server. I obviously know more about PCs than cameras but it does seem odd to me that there is no facility to amend the numbering system on the camera, as I'm sure I'm not the only person to encounter this problem.

When I purchased my K20D I put a card in with pictures from K10D on it and messed up the numbering of pictures on the K20D. A little bit of thought as to how the picture numbering works (explained in camera manual) ment it was extreemly easy to fix...

* Format card
* take picture on K20D
* put card in PC renumber the picture to the next number I wanted in my K20D
* change numbering on K20D to start new numbers on each card
* put card in K20D, take picture (numbering continues from highest on card rather than that remembered in body)
* change back to continuos numbering on K20D

* remember not switch cards (with pictures on) between cameras in future

I'm pretty sure that will work on a compact too as I believe the numbering is handled in the same way

Just use the technique I've described above and you can set the numbering to whatever you like.

Its not described in the manual, and there's no instant fix button but its pretty easy to do.

Combine it on K20D or K7 with being able to specify the first 4 characters of the picture file name and you can 'continue' the file numbering past 9999.

You learn something new every day

A big thank you to Bob and his Pentax. I simply connected camera to PC via usb, renamed the only picture on the card to the next desired number and each subsequent snap was ordered correctly again.