Q: Time zones and Aperture
There seems to be some confusion when working with Aperture and trying to get the time, and the time zone correct when you need to make changes to the Masters (or versions) and you are importing outside of the time zone that you shot the images in.
For example, I shot my images in Cape Town. I had the camera time set to Cape Town local time. When I get home to New York, I open Aperture and import based on the camera time and actual time being set to South Africa, which I believe is GMT+2. In any case, since I am importing the images in New York, and my computer's internal time is set to EST, something always seems to go awry with the time and time zone management.
What is the real deal with this in terms of the way Aperture was designed to handle this issue? Was it designed based on the concept of importing your images while you are still away on the shoot? I can see this being the case since Aperture is a pro level application and most professional photographers will import their images the same day that they shoot them while on location. In those cases, having the time zone settings to update automatically would make perfect sense because the time zones would always match, and more importantly they would match the camera time settings.
In other instances however, when someone might choose to import all of their photos when they get back home, this might cause some problems (at least in my experience). I have my time zone settings to update automatically, but I am based in New York, and I primarily upload/import my images when I get home, not on location. Do I need to alter my time zone settings and/or turn off automatic time zone updating before importing images and playing around with the time and time zone altering settings in Aperture?
If so, is there a way to fix images that have already been imported based on what I thought was the proper times, but now seems to be the wrong times? If anyone has anything to say about this issue, or has some good old fashioned advice on how this aspect of Aperture is managed, it would be greatly appreciated.
Mac
For example, I shot my images in Cape Town. I had the camera time set to Cape Town local time. When I get home to New York, I open Aperture and import based on the camera time and actual time being set to South Africa, which I believe is GMT+2. In any case, since I am importing the images in New York, and my computer's internal time is set to EST, something always seems to go awry with the time and time zone management.
What is the real deal with this in terms of the way Aperture was designed to handle this issue? Was it designed based on the concept of importing your images while you are still away on the shoot? I can see this being the case since Aperture is a pro level application and most professional photographers will import their images the same day that they shoot them while on location. In those cases, having the time zone settings to update automatically would make perfect sense because the time zones would always match, and more importantly they would match the camera time settings.
In other instances however, when someone might choose to import all of their photos when they get back home, this might cause some problems (at least in my experience). I have my time zone settings to update automatically, but I am based in New York, and I primarily upload/import my images when I get home, not on location. Do I need to alter my time zone settings and/or turn off automatic time zone updating before importing images and playing around with the time and time zone altering settings in Aperture?
If so, is there a way to fix images that have already been imported based on what I thought was the proper times, but now seems to be the wrong times? If anyone has anything to say about this issue, or has some good old fashioned advice on how this aspect of Aperture is managed, it would be greatly appreciated.
Mac
Macbook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.6.6), 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Posted on Jan 21, 2011 10:41 PM