I took over two thousand footage whereas on trip in Europe with my associate’s iPhone 15 Professional. Going via them now, I see that the timestamps (as saved within the ‘EXIF’ metadata part of the picture) on a whole lot of them are fully fallacious – they’re off by precisely 9 hours, which occurs to be the time zone distinction between my residence in California and the photograph location in Europe. Examples (these footage had been all taken in the identical basic location at roughly the identical time and are clearly sequential):
-
IMG_2011 – EXIF timestamp 02:19:45 (I used to be asleep at 02:19 native time,
so that is clearly fallacious) -
IMG_2012 – EXIF timestamp 11:25:39 (that is the right native time)
-
IMG_2013 – EXIF timestamp 02:25:58 (taken 19 seconds after the
earlier picture however with fallacious timestamp) -
IMG_2014 – EXIF timestamp 11:28:09 (taken ~2 minutes after the
earlier picture) with right timestamp
All three EXIF timestamps are equally fallacious, on the ‘unhealthy’ photographs – DateTime, DateTimeOriginal, and DateTimeDigitized.
Of specific curiosity are photographs IMG_2012 and IMG_2013 – they had been taken from the identical spot, simply 19 seconds aside, however present timestamps 9 hours aside.
The GPS location of all of the photographs is right – so it is not as if there was no GPS sign at some deadlines inflicting the digicam to assume it was again in CA. These are outside photographs so once more, no GPS points.
The EXIF timestamps are crucial to me for numerous causes so this can be a huge situation. I do have EXIF instruments to right the timestamps, however it’s a terribly tedious process.
I did intently analyze the total EXIF information, and I did discover one factor – for the photographs with ‘right’ timestamps, they present OffsetTime, OffsetTimeOriginal and OffsetTimeDigital as +2:00; and for the photographs with the fallacious timestamps, they present OffsetTime, OffsetTimeOriginal and OffsetTimeDigital as -7:00. I am guessing these are relative to GMT/UTC, as Spain is at present UTC+2 and California is UTC-7. So one thing is inflicting the iPhone to mark half the photographs with the fallacious offset for some motive.
This is a composite screenshot of the 2 photographs mentioned above (screenshots from the iPhone) that had been taken 19 seconds aside. As you’ll be able to see, the picture on the left is displaying 11:25am, whereas the picture on the precise is displaying 2:25am – 9 hours off. Curiously, they kind accurately on the iPhone regardless of the time points.
And here is a snapshot of the EXIF information for the above two photographs:
and a snapshot of the GPS information portion of the EXIF information:
The “GPSTimeStamp” entry – approx. 9:25 – is the right ‘UTC’ time for each footage.
I am curious to grasp how this might have occurred, however I suppose I additionally must discover a solution to right the ‘unhealthy’ variations.
Minor replace – the primary ~1,600 photographs on the journey (taken over a 2 week interval) have correct metadata. The primary ‘unhealthy’ timestamp was IMG_1800, taken Sep-20-2024, and was a part of a sequence of photographs taken inside a church in Montserrat – no apparent distinction from earlier picture. For the rest of the holiday (2 days, approx 200 photographs), the picture metadata was ‘largely unhealthy’ with occasional ‘good’ metadata, however a number of sequences of ‘largely good’ metadata with occasional ‘unhealthy’ metadata. The oddest factor is that the ‘good’ and ‘unhealthy’ photographs had been usually taken in the identical location / related time, which guidelines out environmental / positional points.
Now that we’re again within the US, I’ve only a few new footage to investigate and the all the pieces seems to be again to regular (however we cannot know till we subsequent journey).
UPDATE – here is a snapshot of a home windows file supervisor window, displaying the ‘date taken’ info for a sequence of photographs taken all through the day (I notice home windows file supervisor is not at all times probably the most dependable indicator however on this case I can verify the ‘date taken’ column corresponds to the exif information within the recordsdata).
The pictures proven are in chronological sequence. Img_1914 and 1915 have timestamps circa 3am (I used to be sleeping at the moment). Img_1916 has a timestamp 12:24pm and is right. Then img_1917 goes again to circa 3am, and the photographs all the best way to img_1931 are too early by 9 hours. Then img_1932 has the right time of three:15pm, then the photographs after which might be unhealthy once more, till img_1939, which exhibits the right time of seven:44pm. The pictures then keep ‘good’ till Img_1951, which jumps again 9 hours. The ‘good’ and ‘unhealthy’ photographs had been in lots of instances taken in the very same location, and ALL photographs have the right GPS time.
