This disclosure describes systems and techniques for synchronizing cameras and tagging images for face authentication. For face authentication by a facial recognition model, a dual infrared camera may generate an image stream by alternating between capturing a “flood image” and a “dot image” and tagging each image with metadata that indicates whether the image is a flood or a dot image. Accurately tagging images can be difficult due to dropped frames and errors in metadata tags. The disclosed systems and techniques provide for the improved synchronization of cameras and tagging of images to promote accurate facial recognition.