To the pros who may read this, do you archive your old photos with the year first? Ex., 2010 Doral Country Club?
I've tried a few different naming systems that all had their drawbacks, but eventually found a system that is quite simple and has proved to be foolproof for me over the years. In my opinion year-month-day should always go first. I follow that with a very brief and general description, then the 4 digit frame number. Simple but effective. For example: 20101018 F1 Race 0492. Renaming is easily accomplished using variables; {datesort} F1 Race {frame4}. The photos reside inside a folder titled 20101018 F1 Race; {datesort} F1 Race. The nice thing about always using year-month-day first is that you can put all kinds of photos from different dates into the same folder and by default they will still end up in a logical order, even if you're just viewing the files in a window.
If naming old pre-digital or vintage photos I will still use the same system even if I don't know exactly when it was shot. If I don't even know the year I'll just have a guess, then use 00 for the month and/or the day if I have no idea about those either, like 19860000. That way the date is ALWAYS 8 digits so at least it will be roughly sorted.
The only downfall with the frame number is when you get to 9999 and the camera reverts back to frame number 0001. Those frames will not end up in chronological order when sorted by filename. For those rare occasions, I just use the {seqn} variable and replace the camera's frame numbers starting with 0001.
Some people find it necessary to use hour-minute-second as well after the date, like 20101018 135612 F1Race 0492; {datesort} {hour24}{minute}{second} F1 Race {frame4}. I've never found the need to go that far, and I'd prefer to keep the file names from getting too long. Using the subsecond variable may eliminate the need for a frame number, but I haven't tested that. Given the frame rate many cameras are capable of, I'm not actually sure if it's foolproof or not.
Some people don't use any description at all in their filenames, and rely on keywords to find things. Even though I ALWAYS use Keywords, I still find a brief description in the filename handy when doing things without Photo Mechanic... like moving files around, giving files to other people, or other housekeeping type duties. Looking at dozens of files with names like this 20101018 0492 isn't very helpful when I can't see a preview or access keywords.
I'm sure everyone will have their own ideas, but this sure works well for me. Hope it helps.
