Discrepancy between iNat time and EXIF time

Bug Reports
1

Sometimes the “observed” time does not match the EXIF time of the photo file. Here is an example:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/31378030

iNat indicates that the observation was made on August 5, 2018, at 8:38 p.m., while the EXIF file instead indicates August 5, 2018 at 00:16 a.m, which is the right time.

Strangely, when I sort this day by observation date, the photo appears in the correct order, even if the time displayed is not correct. See:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2018-08-05&order=asc&order_by=observed_on&place_id=any&subview=table&user_id=alainhogue&verifiable=any

This is not an isolated case. This has happened to me a few dozen times out of 7000 observations.

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2

Could you show exif please? It’s not show for this photo.

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3

So the correct time is August 5th, 00:16, not August 6th 00:16? If you still have the photo can you please email it to help@inaturalist.org with metadata intact?

4

Here is the EXIF data for this photo.
Thanks
Alain,

EXIF- papillon-Sparganothis-lycopodiana-6241-AlainHogue
EXIF- papillon-Sparganothis-lycopodiana-6241-AlainHogue453×887 103 KB

5

Here is another example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/31343381
In this example, the observed time display is “9h47”. Based on EXIF datas, the observed time should be 23h49. Note that 9h47 is the posted time. iNat recorded the same time for the observed time.

6

Thanks for sending the photo, @AlainHogue, and letting me log in as you on our server.

I was able to upload that photo and the observation made from it has the correct date and time:

image
image1686×928 167 KB

And if you edit the existing observation’s date and time to this, it fixes it:

image

Both of the examples you’ve given were uploaded a few years ago, and I suspect there was a bug at the time that caused this issue, but I can’t replicate it now.

One thing that just occurred to me (and should have occurred to me sooner) is that neither of the photos in these examples show any EXIF data on their photo pages - are you certain they had EXIF data when you uploaded them?

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