Photo dates wrong when Importing Photos to Mac from PC

Hi all, I’ve just bought my first Mac after years of PC ownership. I am trying to import all my photos to the Mac Photos app. I’m running the

latest version of all the software, operating system etc.

All my photos are on a network drive, which I copied over to my mac. I have double checked (using my PC) and all the metadata is all there on the network drive.

When I view the files in the Finder, I see Date Created as today (ie the day I copied over the photos), and Date Modified as the date the photo was actually taken. I can’t see any other metadata in the Finder app, or when I right click and “get info”.

The problem arises when I try to import the photos to the Photos app. The Photos app uses the “Date Created” to timestamp the photos.. so I have thousands of photos dated “today” when I view the photos in the app – even though they were taken years ago.

Now.. I tried uploading some photos to my iCloud photo library from my PC using iCloud for windows.. and.. the uploaded photos appear correctly in the photos app when I use this method.

I don’t want to upload my entire library via iCloud for Windows.. that would take ages.. but I really want to know why this is happening when I copy the files across.

Any help much appreciated. Thanks !