Photos in created albums not sorted by date/time

Does your camera assign GPS coordinates, when you take the photos?

When and where did you import the photos from your Camera to your Mac?

When you are importing photos to Photos, it will depend on the GPS tags of the imported photos and the timezone setting of your mac, how Photos will interpret the date and time EXIF tags of the imported photos.

For example, you import a photo taken at 8:30 overseas. Photos does not know the timezone the camera has been set to and will make an educated guess.

• If the photo has been tagged with GPS by the camera, Photos will read 8:30 according to the timezone of the GPS, this will be perfect for your iPhone photos, that will be tagged with GPS.
• If the camera did not assign GPS coordinates, Photos will use the timezone of your current system time settings to read the 8:30 clock setting. And the date and time will be shifted by the timezone offset between your current location on import and the overseas location where you imported the photos.

To avoid such confusion, I never ever change the timezone settings in my cameras but keep them strictly set to UTC. This make it easy to adjust the date and time after importing the photos,particular if I crossed the border between timezones several times a day.

You can correct the timezone in the for the photos taken with your digital camera by collecting them in a smart album with the tow rules

"Match all:

• Camera model is ...
• Date captured is in the Range...

Select all photos in this album, then use the command "Image > Adjust Date & Time" to tell Photos the correct time zone where you have taken the photos. Click the time zone strip and select the closest city. Then set the "Date adjusted" back to the "Date original". You want to change only the time zone, not the date and time.

i just noticed, that we cannot adjust the date and time for photos taken on the antarctic Peninsula. It is missing from the maps in "Adjust Date and Time".

Sorting like this can often be explained by time zone mismatches. Most cameras are not as good about knowing and recording their location and time zone at the time a photo is take as an iPhone is. Most don't even attempt to record a time zone, so your Mac may guess wrong when it imports the photos, thinking that you are still in the same time zone (and that the Mac's own time zone is set correctly).

Didn't you say that the pictures were showing up in date order before device order? That still suggests to me that the times are being misinterpreted. Nine hours does seem like a suspiciously large discrepancy.

If it's not a time zone issue, it might be something odd in the way you are doing the photo transfers from your devices. If you describe your methods, perhaps somebody will recognize what could cause a problem.

Could you try to find two photos from your camera and from your iPhone photos, that have been taken at the same time but are not sorted together? This way you can see the date offset and tell how much the time needs to be for the camera photos.

You may also want to create a smart album for your iPhone photos, so you can see, if it least the iPhone photos are sorted correctly by the time. iPhone photos might be sorted incorrectly, if for some of them the GPS is missing or wrong. This can happen, when taking photos in a location without GPS, for example inside large buildings.