Photos taken by different cameras out of order

The big problem is, that Photos will not show the time zone associated with the date and time it is showing in the info. When you are seeing a date and time in the info, the timezone for the time is not necessarily the timezone of the location the photo has been taken. To see the timezone, you have to open the "Image > Adjust date and time " dialog for this photo and look at the "closest city" in the adjust panel. Only then you can compare the date & time correctly.

I am using brute force to make Photos display all times with a timezone suffix:

But it requires to use a Terminal Command to change the default date and time format. You may not want to modify the system defaults. But then the "Image > Adjust date and time " panel is the only place, where you can see the timezone assigned for each photo on import.

I have used this Terminal command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUTimeFormatStrings -dict-add "2" "HH:mm:ss z"

See: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254316210?answerId=258235462022#258235462022

As Matti explained - when we change the timezone in adjust Date and Time, Photos will just subtract the timezone offset from the "Date &Time original", so the capture time will be converted to the new time zone, but will remain the same moment in time.

If a camera has been set to a different timezone than Photos guessed on import, but the clock setting has been correct, and we want to tell photos the correct timezone the camera has been set to, we need to do this in two steps in "Adjust Date & Time":

• First select the correct timezone and closest city - Photos will shift the "Time Adjusted" by the Timezone offset
• Then set the "Time Adjusted" back to the Time Original", so they are the same.

For example, for the picture below the timezone has been set to "Nairobi" in the camera, when the picture has been taken, so I ensured, that the date adjusted and the date original are the same, with the timezone set to Nairobi.

Now the photo will be sorted correctly in Photos.

When I want to convert the displayed time for correctly sorted photos to a different timezone, I just have to change the timezone in Image > Date & Time, without modifying the "Adjusted" time afterwards. This will not change the sort order in Photos.

1. Image's internal metadata 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' sets the date and time.

Image's time zone is set using the computer's time zone location. If present, the following internal metadata tags override previously mentioned time zone, and they might affect sorting up to ±12 hours if they happen to be present in some image:

2. 'GPS' location sets the time zone.

3. If 'ExifIFD:OffsetTimeOriginal' exists, it overrides all other time zone tags above.

For more details:

Movie dates and Photos.app - Apple Community

So Canon images are incorrectly set at -05:00 instead the correct +02:00 (Croatia is +02:00 DST) and because of that its images appear 7 hours later than they are supposed to.

Was Canon incorrectly set to New York time zone, or some neighbor western time zone with Daylight Savings set ON? The RAW + JPEG pair might produce its own glitches to the time zones Photos reads, though (I edit raw in Lightroom and import only edited .jpg to Photos). Photos seems to ignore Canon raw's proprietary TimeZone and TimeZoneCity while it reads the edited .jpg OffsetTimeOriginal. Did you edit raw outside Photos?

You might tweak the Canon images time zone in Photos to set them straight.

Did you import both the iPhone and Canon photos into your library while in the same time zone. If not that would account for the time difference.

If that's the case you can adjust the photos that are out of order with the Image ➙ Adjust Date and Time… menu to match the other photos.

If these were my pictures (and I have had way worse!) I would

1. import all the pictures from the SD cards to my Photos Library, and I'd
2. put them all in a "San Marino Cruise" album. Then I'd
3. make a Smart Album to collect the Canon pictures together. Then I'd
4. select all those in the Canon Smart Folder, and I'd
5. use the "Image ➙ Adjust Date and Time" menu choice that Old Toad suggested, and I would
6. add 4 minutes and 19 seconds to the time for the Canon pictures. Then I'd
7. make sure that I had set View>Sort to Keep Sorted by Oldest First.

Keep in mind that in #4, you've selected all, but the menu expects you to change only the first one, and it will change the other by the same amount.

Have you done this? Does it work, and if not, how is it not right?

Victoria Herring wrote:

I am comparing pics taken at close to the same time and time zone

As léonie suggested, enable time zone display via the Terminal (just copy & paste the line below to the Terminal window and press enter) and re-launch Photos. Then see if there is any difference in Photos Get Info that might explain the issue.

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUTimeFormatStrings -dict-add "2" "HH:mm:ss z"

Of course, léonie is right-- you have to add 4 minutes and 19 seconds and also account for the time zone difference by backing off the right number of hours.

I would do it in 2 steps-- add 4 minutes and 19 seconds and get that done, and then go back to try changing the hour. If you know the difference in time zones, start there. Daylight time could add a 1 hour complication. Probably trial and error is the fastest way to get to the right order.

You can use a Smart Album to get all the Canon pictures together like this:

Here, I didn't type in Nikon Z 8; rather I scrolled to find the right camera model.

Once you get all the Canon pictures together, you can select all and change them all at once. It will show you the time for the first picture of the selection, so be prepared to correct that one. And then the time for all the others will change accordingly. Sometimes I mess it up and have to nudge the timing a couple of times.

Your camera may not have GPS built in. My Nikon has an app that reads GPS on my iPhone and sends that to the camera. When I'm taking pictures away from the phone, I have to fake it manually.

The iPhone is the fastest camera I have and frequently the only camera I am having with me.

I think our problem here, though, is 4 minutes and 19 seconds.

Plus and unknown timezone offset of an one ore more hours to explain the incorrect sorting.

I am not sure at all, if the few seconds are the full time difference, if both pictures have been imported with a different timezone assigned, as long as Victoria has not checked the timezones for the incorrectly sorted photos.