What is up with the Time Stamp?

Question

Level 1

27 points

What is up with the Time Stamp?

I set my cameras (or they set themselves) to the time zone I am in when taking the pictures (Central Europe summer time). My home time zone is Mountain Time. When I import my photos the time zone always shows as Mountain, not European. The time stamp adjusts so I wind up with pix that show the time it was taken IN COLORADO! I was in Sweden! So instead of the 11:00 AM it was in Stockholm, my pictures say it was 3 AM! I vaguely remember being asked about this when I first started with Photos but I cannot find the screen to change from use home time to use local time (or whatever it says).

Just one of my many, many problems with Photos.

Linda

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), iPad and iPhone as well

Posted on Sep 8, 2016 8:01 PM

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Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,461 points

Oct 6, 2016 9:51 PM in response to Harward8

You can change the Time Zone in Image > Adjust Date & Time > click on the one you want to use.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,879 points

Sep 8, 2016 10:09 PM in response to Harward8

When you import photos, the Photos app will by default use the time zone of the current system time, unless the photos have been tagged with a GPS time zone tag, that Photos understands. It is less trouble, if you import the photos while you are still in the time zone where you took them, or at least the system time of the Mac is set to the time zone, where you have taken them.

If you shift the timezone in the "Image > Adjust Date and Time" panel (at the bottom o the panel - closest city) as Ryzs recommended, Photos will shift the recorded time by the timezone offset. You will want only to set the timezone, but not adjust the original time. So take a note of the hour before you change the time zone and then immediately change the adjusted hour back to the original hour value.

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Answer 3

Harward8 Author

Level 1

27 points

Sep 10, 2016 12:57 PM in response to léonie

Thanks you. I know how to adjust the time zones as you advised. I would just love to not have to do that and import them in the time zone in which they were taken. I use multiple cameras and took about 4000 pix (although there are over 7000 in my library - go figure.

My iPhone also reflects the mountain time zone and i know it has a GPS that Apple should recognize!

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

200,879 points

Sep 11, 2016 12:24 AM in response to Harward8

Even with GPS assigned to the iPhone photos it can get really messy, i.e, when you also have My Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library enabled, the time zone on the iPhone does not necessarily match the time zone of the GPS locations.

A few years ago I made a trip through Alaska and Canada. we were continually crossing the border between Alaska and Yukon Territory, and thus switching time zones, sometimes several times a day. The iPhone had not always a cellular connection, so it would not switch the time immediately after crossing the border. It was unpredictable, when it would change the time, so I had to disable the automatic time switches and changed the time zone manually. But it was not always possible to tell when we crossed the border between the states and Canada. The GPS is not reliable to infer the time zone from that the iPhone has been set to.

In the evening in the hotel I had a hard time to separate the photos according to time zones on import.

After a few days of this mess I reverted to my old practice of keeping all cameras, even the iPhone and the iPad set to UTC at all times. This way I could be sure about the time zones used when taking the photos for all devices. I only changed this after I purchased an Apple Watch, that needs to sync with the iPhone.

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Answer 5

Harward8 Author

Level 1

27 points

Oct 6, 2016 10:06 PM in response to Harward8

Sorry it too me so long to get back to you. Here is an example of the problems I had just today.

I went into my library and started a new album. I had already corrected the time on these pix via the image adj. They were on my computer.

When I started a smart album there were some duplicates in there. These duplicates had the old time on it, i.e. a photo taken at 10AM in Russia shows up as 1:00 AM. The one with the time I previously fixed is coming from Photo Stream. Should I not be using Photo Stream with iCloud Photo Library? And which photo should I delete? I've been deleting the duplicate and keeping the Photo Stream version. Have I screwed up badly? I know I've lost some pictures and a few are corrupted. Photos has a steep learning curve.

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

200,879 points

Oct 6, 2016 11:14 PM in response to Harward8

When I started a smart album there were some duplicates in there. These duplicates had the old time on it, i.e. a photo taken at 10AM in Russia shows up as 1:00 AM.

My Photo is only necessary, if you have devices, that do not use iCloud Photo Library. I am using it on my Pod, that has still iOS5.

But when I enable it on my iPhone with iOS10 and iCloud Photo Library, I am getting frequently duplicates of all photos taken with the iPhone. If all your devices are using iCloud Photo Library as well, turn My Photo Stream off. My Photo Stream is transferring the original, unedited version, while iCloud Photo Library will transfer and sync all edits.

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