'Duplicate' Lightroom imports

[UKSarahg]

Something odd has happened to my last Lightroom import, and I'm hoping someone might be able to shed some light on it...

I took some photos on Friday morning, uploaded them and cleared the SD card, then took some more in the afternoon. Mixed in with the afternoon's uploads are duplicates of the morning's uploads (though they have exactly the same file number, so I guess, strictly speaking, they aren't duplicates). If you delete one, it deletes the other, but if you edit one, it doesn't edit the other. 

What's strange is that the 'duplicate' shots are labelled with different camera settings - for example the first one has settings of 1/250, f2.8, ISO 200 (the settings I used to take the shot), while the second is 1/250, f5.6, ISO 3200.

Does anyone have any idea what might have happened?!

[Tony_See]

Are the resulting duplicate images identical in histogram and look on your screen, but still have different exposure settings?

[UKSarahg]

@Tony_See Yes, exactly this. The histograms are identical, but the exposure settings are different (in every case, the first version of the picture has the settings that I shot in, and the second has a narrower aperture/higher ISO to reach the same exposure).

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

I can't explain exactly what happened or why, but if the afternoon photos have exactly the same file names as the morning photos, these should not be considered duplicates in Lightroom as the capture date and time will differ.

However, people have reported bugs with regard to this process where they always reset the file counter in the camera to 0001, and so each shoot has the identical file names, and sometimes Lightroom gets confused. So perhaps a change to make that will fix this problem is to rename the photos in the afternoon shoot so that maybe LR won't get confused, and then import the renamed photos again.

[UKSarahg]

@dj_paige Thank you, this is a good tip - I'll give it a go.

[hhelmbold]

I am having this issue since the latest Lightroom Update. Every time I insert my SD card it will re-import previous images and create duplicates. The "Don't import suspected duplicates" check box is checked. In all the years this has always worked and is definately since the latest update.