I’m not sure if this is a bug of a data confusion problem, but a new user says inat is misidentifying the timestamp on their photos. I made this on their behalf since they said the same thing in another observation so I figured it was worth having someone take a look.
For some reason inaturalist is not reading the exif data time correctly. The observed date is correct but not the time of day.
Observation timestamp is April 4, 2025 04:06 AM PDT
I see these two seemingly conflicting timestamps on the image data:
Date time 2025-04-04 22:18:45 -0700
Date time original 2025-04-04 04:06:45 -0700
Date time digitized 2025-04-04 04:06:45 -0700
They haven’t actually said what time of day it was observed on, or whether they have edited the observed on time, correct? I don’t think we know enough here, but 4:06 pm looks like a much more realistic time for that photo than 10:18 pm.
They have not said what time is correct, and they have not edited the time. Just a correction the observation says 4:06 AM, not PM, which does seem incorrect for the photo. (Though so does 10pm)
I run in to issues when I travel overseeas. I normally don’t bother adjusting the time in the camera, and do that in post. But when I forget to fix the times before uploading, I get weird times like bright daylight shots taken at “4am”
The user seems to be from the same place where the observation is, so this seems unlikely to be a timezone error, unless they simply misconfigured the time in their camera.
Similar issue here, on the web platform (win11, opera browser) when importing photos developed with FastStone Image Viewer (from Canon RAW to JPG), the date/time stamp of the EXIF is not read at all, which forces me to enter all dates manually (in this case I usually just copy & paste the same date/time for all pictures of the day, even if there are dozens of photos, shot from 8 am to 4 pm).
No big deal, but apparently the EXIF’s date/time is still available, since it is correctly displayed in the details of the photo! eg https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/545393000 * !
So in this case at least, it seems that it could be possible for iNat to retrieve the correct data already while uploading/importing the pictures… I guess a different function is used to read EXIF during import vs displaying the photo information page?
I usually don’t have this issue with JPG pictures from the phone, even if edited with the same FastStone software, or RAW photos developed and edited with Canon software.
(*) Edit: after checking I see that the correct time only appears when I’m logged in on the link https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/545393000 so other users will not understand what I’m talking about here…
Edit: some screenshots of the issue, just to illustrate my previous post!
image on my computer ready to be uploaded to iNat, metadata from Windows 11 (left) and in the Exif metadata of FastStone Vierwer (right) shows the correct DateTime of the shooting
yet iNat web page with the info of the picture still shows the correct DateTime (which is now different than the time entered manually in the upload form, 11:57 in this case since I uploaded dozens of picture, I only looked at the 1st and copied the same Time)
The EXIF DateTime tag does not record when the photo was taken - it’s actually equivalent to the last file modification date/time, which will be reset every time the photo is copied, renamed, resized, etc. For obvious reasons, iNaturalist ignores this tag, as in many cases it will differ from the true date/time of the observation. Instead, it uses the DateTimeOriginal / DateTimeDigitized tags, which all modern digital cameras should record at the point the photo is taken/saved in the camera itself.
If your photo doesn’t have those tags, it’s probably because you’ve processed the original file in some way that didn’t preserve its metadata. Many photo editing tools won’t keep the original metadata unless you explicitly ask them to do that. I suggest you consult the user manuals for whatever tools you’re using and adjust the settings relating to the handing of EXIF metadata. If those tools don’t provide the necessary settings, you could use e.g. exiftool to explicitly copy the metadata from the original file to the processed file - or just look for some better photo editing tools
