Need to edit EXIF tag "Date taken" to include time

[jon.lavie]

I have an older desktop running Win 10 Pro 64 bit, scanning (14) rolls of 35-year-old Kodak Gold Max film rated at ASA400 on a Plustek 8200i film scanner with SilverFast 9.2.1 software, creating a .tif file about 200MB in size.

In each new file’s metadata, the EXIF tags “Date”, “Date created”, “Date accessed”, “Date modified” and “Date last saved” are populated by the SilverFast software with the current system date and time.

I then use Windows Explorer to number the images (YYYY MM DD RR FF.tif). In that process I also populate “Date taken” with the date I remember the pictures were made but I cannot edit the time portion of the tag. The time component on the tag is important to me. I have nearly 300 frames so far of life aboard an aircraft carrier, some whole rolls just shooting aircraft landings and launches. I’d like very much to get these in sequence relative to time, not frame number. “Date created” and “Date modified” is also displayed but which I cannot edit (nor need to).

I am aware Windows Explorer can also display, “Date acquired”, “Date archived”, “Date completed”, “Date received”, “Date released”, “Date sent”, and finally “Date visited”. They apparently cannot be edited. I have never used these tags.

When I attempted to use XnView MP (v1.11.5) I loaded the image one at a time, went to Metadata>Edit EXIF and saw the opportunity to change the “Date taken”, but again, cannot change the time.
Is there any way to make this edit?

[xnview]

please use 'change timestamp'

[jkm]

Welcome to the forums, jon...

When I attempted to use XnView MP (v1.11.5) I loaded the image one at a time, went to Metadata>Edit EXIF and saw the opportunity to change the “Date taken”, but again, cannot change the time.
Is there any way to make this edit?

You're actually mistaken about that... You can change the time.

In fact, there are multiple ways to accomplish this in XnViewMP.

If you use the Metadata->Edit EXIF function, you will see that there are entry fields for Date Modified, Date Taken, and Date Digitized. Although the dropdown for each of those only provides a calendar-style date picker, you actually can change the timestamp by directly editing the entry field. I don't know why you didn't see this. If you see an entry of 4/20/1997 1:22 PM, you can just click in it and type to manually change 1:22 to 3:37 or whatever you want. However, you cannot set the seconds this way, only hours:minutes. That is a shortcoming of the dialog. (Hopefully soon to be corrected.)

As Pierre points out above, there is also the Metadata->Change Timestamp function. This allows you change, and importantly, programmatically change the timestamps for multiple files, basing the new timestamp off another timestamp and incrementing or modifying it as necessary.

For your use case, Change Timestamp will probably be most effective, but you can use Edit Metadata if you want.

It's also important to understand the issues with the naming of these particular fields, and there importance. You might know this already, but I'll point it out for the benefit of others who may read this in the future to learn how to solve their problem.

First, you have to be careful not to conflate filesystem date fields you see in Windows Explorer (like "Date", "Date Created", and "Date Modified") with the actual EXIF metadata fields. The filesystem date fields are automatically updated by the operating system based on file operations; you should assume they are mutable and you don't control them.

The actual EXIF metadata fields are data payload; they are the contents of your file, and will never be modified automatically by the operating system, unless you explicitly try and modify them.

The EXIF fields are not named consistently between different applications. Here's a table you can reference and compares the name in the EXIF specification, Exiftool (an industry standard application used by XnViewMP), and XnViewMP itself:

Code: Select all

Exif Specification        Exiftool           XnViewMP        Purpose
DateTime                  ModifyDate         ModifyDate      Date/Time the file was changed
DateTimeOriginal          DateTimeOriginal   DateTaken       Date/time when original image was taken
DateTimeDigitized         CreateDate         DateDigitized   Date/time when the image was stored as digital data

(You can read more here.)

This can be especially confusing, because XnViewMP will show you all those names (in different places) and will also show you the filesystem fields. So for example on the Properties tab, in the File section, you will see a field "Creation Date/Time", and on the Exiftool tab you will see a field "Create Date". There are NOT the same field or data, regardless of how similar they seem. The first is the filesystem timestamp for the creation of the file, and the second is the Exif metdata tag DateDigitized which Exiftool calls CreateDate.

So one needs to be careful until sufficient experience is gained in dealing with this sort of thing.

For your purposes, you should set the following two fields (I'll use the XnViewMP name, but remember the above):

Date Taken: use the date/time you remember taking your pictures, as you said
Date Digitized: use the date/time you scanned the film stock. Silverfast conveniently supplied this for you.

An appropriate use for ModifyDate (EXIF:DateTime), if you wanted to use it, would be for example the time you performed final cleanup and color grading on the scanned image. This field is used for when the image data itself is modified. The filesystem modified date is liable to get changed anytime you modify the file in any way, like by editing metadata.

Hopefully this helps... Good luck.