Getting multiple cameras

On Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:47:29 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

For the last few years I've used a Nikon Coolpix 2100 with Nikon's
Image Transfer and View software. I don't care much for the Nikon
View software, but the Image Transfer software is great. Simply plug
the camera in (as a PTP camera), up pops the dialogue box and off it
goes. I've set it to create a folder automatically in format yyyymmdd
(3.g. 20081219 for today) and then it renames each photo from
DSCNXXXX.jpg to "Photo 2008-12-19 15-43-58.jpg" so that they are
correctly ordered in a simple Windows file manager. It then deletes
the files from the camera.

I like that setup as it means I can work with the photos at the
filename level just as easily as through some sort of gui tool.

Is there any generic software around which will achieve the same when
I move to the new camera combo of a Fuji S5800 and a Samsung cheap
point and shoot. Ideally I'd like every camera to use the same store
so that I know they are being nicely filed etc.

Probably, but you may not need it, since Nikon's Image Transfer
and View software may operate with the Fuji. If not, the CD
packaged with Fuji's cameras includes FinePixViewer which also
creates a yyyymmdd folder to transfer pictures to, lets you decide
how to rename them, and gives you the option to keep or delete the
image files from the camera. If you don't delete the files, you
also have the option to re-copy the existing files in the camera or
just copy files that it hasn't previously copied. I just connected
my Nikon DSLR to the computer's USB port and FinePixViewer
automatically started, and then the Save Image Wizard also started,
found and showed the images in the camera (even though it knows
nothing about how Nikon stores and names their image files) and
showed the complete path as well as the folder name (defined by my
rules as 2008_1219) as well as giving me the ability to change any
of the default settings prior to starting the file transfer. Also
nice was that the displayed thumbnails automatically showed which of
the JPG files were created with the AdobeRGB color space with a
little tag at the top right corner of each thumbnail. I'm pretty
sure that this is the same version of FinePixViewer that you'll get
with the S5800's CD (it was installed from an S5700's CD) and I
believe that you can download newer versions from Fuji's website, so
there's little need do look for some generic software to do the same
job.