nossaflex

The nossaflex package is the entry of the NOSSAFLEX file naming convention into the R universe to help scientific, professional or amateur photographers to name their picture files consistently and informatively.

When taking a picture with an analog camera, data such as aperture, shutter speed or focal length are not automatically saved the way they are in a digital camera. Many photographers write down these precious metadata in a notebook, we want to help them improve their workflow and data quality.

What is NOSSAFLEX?

Here is an explanation from the creators:

It’s as easy as the name – NOSSAFLEX has all of the information in the title.

NO = Number
SS = Shutter Speed
A = Aperture
FL = Focal Length
EX = Exposure

NOSSAFLEX file names looks like this: NO03_SS250_A8_FL80_EX0.jpg or this: NO34_SS30_A2.8_FL35_EX+1.tiff!

Learn more on their [website]{https://nossaflex.io/the-system} or on their [Youtube channel]{https://www.youtube.com/@NOSSAFLEX}.

The package

Here are the two main functions in the package:

• renaming_nossaflex batch-renames picture files from uninformative DSC_00345.jpg to information-rich NOSSAFLEX name based on data provided by the user, see {analog} section: NO03_SS250_A8_FL80_EX0.jpg.
• editing_exif batch-saves the metadata of the pictures into the exif slots of the scan files (jpg, tiff, etc).

Analog or an other app

The workflow

Installation

You can install the development version of nossaflex from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
# devtools::install_github("AlbanSagouis/nossaflex")

Example

This is a basic example which shows you how to solve a common problem:

library(nossaflex)
files <- c("Pictures/2024/01 02 Winter in Berlin/DSC_001034",
           "Pictures/2024/01 02 Winter in Berlin/DSC_001035",
           "Pictures/2024/01 02 Winter in Berlin/DSC_001036")
filenames <- reading_nossaflex(path = "path_to_the_filenames.txt") # provided by the `analog` app
renaming_nossaflex(filenames = filenames, files = files)

Additionally you may want to safely save the shots metadata inside the scan files:

metadata <- reading_nossaflex(path = "path_to_the_filenames.txt") |>  # provided by the `analog` app
     parsing_nossaflex()
editing_exif(files, metadata)

Related work

The package relies heavily on the great exiftoolr{https://github.com/JoshOBrien/exiftoolr/} package by @JoshOBrien which itself depends on the great exiftool{https://exiftool.org/} software by Phil Harvey.
Finally, jExifToolGUI{https://github.com/hvdwolf/jExifToolGUI} offers exif editing and with a Graphical Interface, nice.