Identical photos appearing from two different cameras

[charlesq57094644]

I took photos of an event with two cameras. I downloaded the photos to the same Lightroom CC catalog and some of the photos are appearing twice. The EXIF metadata from one photo indicates it was taken with Camera A and the metadata for the second identical photo shows it was taken with Camera B at a different time. The photos LOOK absolutely identical in every way. I'm using Lightroom CC 7.3.1 on a Mac with OS High Sierra 10.13.4. This is very disturbing since some photos I took are evidently not appearing. The "clones" are appearing rather than the photo actually taken.

[john beardsworth]

What were the preview settings upon import? Try taking a few problem images and run the command Metadata > Read Metadata from FIle, and then generating 1:1 previews.

[charlesq57094644]

Thanks, I performed the Read Metadata from File and generated new previews. Now I have two identical photos, as before, but both photos also have identical metadata as if they were taken by the same camera at the exact same time.

I may download all photos to a different catalog to see if I have the same problem.

[charlesq57094644]

Ok, I downloaded all photos to a different catalog without any problems.

Here is what happened in the original download. First photos downloaded were from a Canon 7D mk II. These downloaded fine. Second set of photos downloaded were from a Canon 5D mk IV. NONE of the previews of the 5D photos appeared. Lightroom simply duplicated some of the 7D photos but added the EXIF metadata from the 5D photos. I have never had this happen before.

This appears to be a bug that can be very detrimental to a photographer's business. If I had not checked the downloaded files carefully and formatted my CF cards I would have lost several hundred photos taken for an important client.

[john beardsworth]

I am not sure I can see how that would happen. Maybe review the process again and see if you can figure out what is happening. We are talking about a regular Import? Any renaming in the Import dialog? These files are definitely in different folders? etc

[charlesq57094644]

I imported images from both cameras to the same folder. Images were renamed upon import, something I always do.

I removed the images from the catalog, but kept them in case a review is needed.

[Rafael Aviles]

This may help. There is a strange bug when importing from memory cards if selected from the “Device” menu. The workaround is shown in this thread: Importing Issues

[charlesq57094644]

I downloaded photos from another event and had the same problem. I downloaded from the Files section of the Source window rather than the Devices section as suggested by another thread on this topic. This did not resolve the problem. I downloaded the files twice with the same problem.

I downloaded the files a third time, but did not change the file names upon import. The problem did not happen this time. Apparently the bug has something to do with the file renaming convention I use on some files. I have been using this file renaming convention for this client for over a year without problems. The bug seems to be new to the latest version of Lightroom Classic.

File naming convention: Date (YYYY)__Date (MM)__Date (DD) Client Name Sequence # (0001)