Is it possible to load photos back onto the camera card?

[OleButt]

I was thrilled when I saw the quality of the display from my NEX-5 when connected by HDMI to my 40 inch Sony HD TV. Just the thing for my Mother-in-law, who is sight impaired, to see a family slideshow.

But when I loaded some JPEGs taken previously with the NEX-5 back onto the SHDC card (using USB connected to the camera), the camera won't display them. Big big disappointment.

By the way, when I later used Lightroom to import from the camera, the photos that I uploaded to the NEX-5 and which it won't display are there and import with no trouble.

Is it not possible to load photos back into the camera and view them in the camera?

[OleButt]

Further experimentation shows it will upload RAW files and display them, but not JPEGS! What's going on?

[Larvin72]

Yes you can. Use windows explorer to transfer back images. Do not use PMB.

[OleButt · Accepted solution]

I have been experimenting and discovered it is not really a Sony problem but a Lightroom one. Like a lot of photographers I use Adobe Lightroom to manage my photos and it is writing metadata into its own database which is throwing the NEX-5 when I later load the photos onto a card.

I am certainly not going to stop using LR (ask a LR user whether he would rather lose LR or an index finger and he would have to think about it) but there are work arounds:

1. Only take photos in RAW. I do this anyway for my pro shots but family and fun stuff I tend to use JPEGS. RAW photos keep the metadata in seperate XMP sidecar files so as not to corrupt the RAW information.

However note that any development you do to a photo (crop, levels, etc etc) will not be seen when you load the photo onto the card as LR is a non-destructive editor and never touches the original file (just one of the things that makes it so good).

2. If using JPEGs, before importing them through LR, untick the boxes in the following Cataloge preference settings:

"Include Develop settings inside Metadata in JPEG, TIFF and PSD files"

"Automatically write changes to XMP"

As noted before, any development you do to a photo (crop, levels, etc etc) will not be seen when you load the photo onto the card.

Also note that the file naming must be consistent. It must follow the pattern _DSCxxxx.JPG where the xs are any digit.

I have tried exporting the images as full size JPEGs through LR, renaming them to the above convention, but it doesn't seem to work.