Photo Date Created/Date Modfied

[William McMahon Profile Private message]

This may seem like the dumbest post yet but I am always confused by the Date Created and Date Modified when I view my photos taken with my Canon cameras. It seems that the date TAKEN is always later then the date MODIFIED.

Thanks for any feedback,
Bill

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Depending on just where you are seeing that information, I would start by making sure my camera was set to the correct time (or at least matched the computer). I do not see any differences in my images between the "created" and "digitized" times in the EXIF, but I do see another time that was apparently set by Photoshop that is close to when the "details" windows says the file was created (it was about 3 minutes different - I expect Photoshop set the time when I opened the file and windows set the time when I saved it). I rename all my images based on the EXIF time stamp which generally works very well (except for the time on vacation where one camera was set to daylight savings time and the other was still on standard time ). Have you compared the times you are seeing with the timestamp in the EXIF header on the image (and verified the camera is set to the right time) ?

mikey

[William McMahon Profile Private message]

Mikey,
I just reviewed some photos I took last summer in New Hampshire. EXIF info for one of them reads

Date Created: 8/19
Date Modified: 8/13
Date Taken: 8/13

Bill

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Very odd - what are you using to view that info ? That looks more like a windows message than from the normal EXIF viewer (like what I see with Irfanview etc). That is definitely not a minor time mis-match when you see a 6 day difference !! Do you have Irfanview (FREE) on your machine ? what does it show for the EXIF data ?

mikey

[DickK Profile Private messageWebsite]

As far as I know, the only place you'll see a "Date created" is in windows file manager. The creation date is just when the file was created which could be any of several things but it won't be when the image was taken. Data modified is similarly without meaning when it comes to the image. The Windows displayed "Date picture taken" is an extract of EXIF (information stored in the image by the camera).

EXIF dates are like

DateTime - 2011:04:07 08:44:05
DateTimeOriginal - 2011:04:07 08:44:05
DateTimeDigitized - 2011:04:07 08:44:05

Each has a reason to exist and means different things but Original is, I believe, what Windows uses as Date Picture Taken.

The fact that the Windows-displayed dates are different from each other isn't saying anything much about the image. Unfortunately, ProShow will only shows the Windows 'date created' value.

[pd Profile Private message]

Bill,

Check your computer system clock. It is probably incorrect.

What Mickey described is correct, ie, Date taken is the actual, while the modified date is when you download it into your computer. At least that is what I noticed on my computer.

[PhotoMill Profile Private message]

And this proves even further that there are no such questions as "Dumb Questions" !! This had me baffled for a long time as well until I realized that different programs issued differing time stamps.

...Steve