iPhone photos have different file and EXIF times

léonie wrote:

How did you transfer the photos from the iPhone to the Mac? Did you use the Photos.app or Image Capture or iCloud Photos?

When I export a photo from Photos for Mac, it is using the capture date of the photo as the file creation date, but is converting the time to the local time zone - the timezone of the system time of my Mac. For example, I exported a photo taken in Buenos Aires, March 16, 2007 at 15:29:23 GMT-3, and Photos exported it to my current timezone GMT+1, so the file creation date is shown in the Finder as March 16, 2007 at 19:29:23 . The content created time is still showing 15:29:23, the local time in Argentina.

I don't use any of Phots.app, Image Capture or iCloud Photos, I simply transferred from my iPhone to my iMac using AirDrop.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "content created time" …

Richard.Taylor wrote:

larry666 wrote: …the change in daylight saving time occured in the UK… I transferred my iPhone photos to my iMac along with the photos from two different cameras. I noticed the iPhone photos had different file and EXIF times.

Exif metadata usually has both the file creation time and the image creation time. What you see depends on the app you choose to view the picture. File managers, like Finder or Explorer show the file creation date. Image managers like Photos show the Image creation date. But, as you know, those depend on the camera settings and time zones.

You have to acknowledge that you pretty much chose the absolutely most confusing situation for comparing dates and times! I remember a trip to Ireland (before GPS, etc) and trying to synchronize the pictures from four different cameras. The thing is, different cameras may treat times and dates in a different way. People don't always think to set the time zone or the clock. I don't think the cause matters-- you just need to fix it with "Adjust Date and Time." Sometimes just changing the time zone there works, but I wouldn't count on it. Just go ahead and change the date and time so they agree with the other cameras. Who knows, when the OS changes, or when you change cameras, it may all go haywire.

The Info window should show the kind of camera, so the first thing that I would do is make a Smart Album for each kind of camera, like this:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/b441e38b-4740-4564-9d35-1af373349394

Then I can see if a single camera has the pictures in the order I expect, even if the times don't agree with others. If the camera's pictures are consistent, then I find a picture from that camera that's taken at the same time as another camera, so I can see how different they are. Then I can select all and use the "Image>Adjust Date and Time" fix all of them at once.

If you select all the pictures and choose Adjust Date and Time, then you see in that dialog the info for the first pictures. When you fix the time to make the first one correct, it changes all the others by the same difference. So you fix them all at once. Then you go to the next set of pictures with times that need to be changed.

The idea is to find pictures that all have the same "time system," and use Adjust Date and Time to make them agree with your standard.

I learned a while ago when travelling to synchronise the times on all image capture devices when I arrive at my destination with the local time. Neither of the cameras is clever enough to manage image capture times in any sort of sophisticated way. The time I set on the cameras is all that gets recorded with the photo.

Sounds like the macOS is too clever for its own good, picking up the time zone differences and adjusting from the actual capture time to local time.

Any idea if that can be stopped …?