Rating a RAW thumbnail causes it to rotate and lock.

Question

I use Bridge (CS3) to examine all the RAW files from my shoots and select the best for further processing in ACR. To do this I rate the thumbnails/images using the star system.
This works OK for RAW images that are in landscape (horizontal) format, but I strike a bug when rating images in portrait (vertical) format.
The majority of the time when I rate a portrait image, Bridge then immdeiately rotates the thumbnail (and the displayed image) 90 degrees anti-clockwise. The two Rotate buttons are then greyed out and I cannot rotate the images or thumbnails back to vertical. (If I select some affected images along with unaffected ones the Rotate buttons are not greyed out, but clicking on them only rotates the unaffected ones).
Removing the Rating doesn't fix the problem. They remain stubbornly rotated. This causes me problems when I go to do a second pass through the 5-star images to select the final ones for post-processing, as I have to turn my head to the side to get a proper look at the images (they are all people shots and it is very difficult to assess them unless they are oriented in an expected way).
This may be unrelated but I have also noticed that, for the unaffected images, I often have the ability to enter Audio, Video and DICOM metadata. Once they are rotated by Bridge I am no longer able to enter that metadata. (The images have been taken on a Canon 350D, so audio and video isn't applicable and this isn't a problem in itself, more just additional information about the problem).
I have been unable to find any other mention of this behaviour except for one thread on Flickr where another user mentions the same problem (with no solution).
It's a clean CS3 install on a new PC, and the images are all newly shot on a Canon 350D. I have the workspace arranged with thumbnails in a strip across the bottom and metadata in the righthand pane, but changing this layout doesn't fix the problem.
Anyone got an ideas?

Answer 1

This auto rotate is unusual, so must not be a universal problem with Bridge.  Just a thought here.
It could be the camera.  Some cameras have a setting to save the camera's Orientation for each exposure. This information is stored in the image file as EXIF data ( a form of metadata). File Browser recognizes the embedded data and attempts to "help" you by rotating your images to match the camera's assumption.  Check your camera's documentation to see how to turn it off.
Let us know if this works.
Note:  I have a Nikon with the Auto Image Rotation function ON, but do not have the problem you describe.