Can an intent to open the camera specify a prefix to the names of any photo's taken? I understand that there are apps that make renaming easy but would it be possible to specify the photo name actually before taking the photo? If so would this also work with an app that allows the user to take multiple photo's before returning to the app, rather than the one photo most apps allow. Sorry for the newb question!
Yes. The app that starts the intent (i.e. the app with the "take photo" button) is responsible for choosing a file name and creating the file. It then puts that file's URI (its path) in the intent. The camera app then opens that file, writes the photo to it, and gives a result back to the first app.

The upshot of this is that it's up to the calling app (the one with the "take photo" button) to give you a way to set the file name, if they want to do that. The file name will take effect whatever camera app you use.

The intent protocol doesn't provide a way for the calling app to ask for more than one photo, so there's no way for an app to offer this feature without launching the camera app several times in succession.

If you're interested in the details, the official Android developer documentation describes it, with code examples.