Time observed not displayed correctly?

Not very familiar with various timezone settings, but this seems wrong:

Android example:

Photo metadata: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/45017850
Time observed: 2019-07-15 08:10:00 -0700

Observation detail: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28862644
Time observed: Jul 15, 2019 · 8:09 AM UTC
(not that it’s a minute off, but the timezone?)

Identify: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&id=28862644
Time observed: July 15, 2019 3:09 AM


Web example:

https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/43526071
2019-06-03 16:07:35 -0700

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27944611
Jun 3, 2019 · 4:07 PM CEST

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=any&quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch&id=27944611
June 3, 2019 9:07 AM

it may be worth noting that this observation was created using the Android app

Could this be related to the Android app using the manually set desktop time zone setting rather than the photo metadata which uses the phone’s time zone? I noted this effect at:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/time-zones-are-they-important-how-do-you-change-it/4718/2

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I don’t know where the issue lies, but the metadata taken from all of my pictures always shows on iNat as the day before. This is even though the camera and the photo itself, both have the correct date. This is using a desktop and it’s been that way since I started using iNat.

@karen33317 – i looked at this photo (https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/44906235), and it looks like the datetimestamp on this photo is actually next year (2020). i think that’s fundamentally what’s causing your issue. it’s a little confusing because the observed on date on your observation shows up as 2019, but i think that’s related to problems described here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/date-submitted-before-date-observed/3120. (so yours is a different issue than what’s described in this thread, probably.)

Investigating the Android example.

As for the web example, the user has chosen Paris for their account’s time zone, so that time zone will be tacked on to the end of the date and time of their observations, when uploaded via the web. Not a bug, but perhaps time zones can be handled better.

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The photo metadata does not have to match the observation. The Date time value you see at https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/45017850 (as well as everything else listed under Width and Height) are just the values we parsed out of the EXIF / XMP tags. We will utilize the DateTimeOriginal and/or DateTimeDigitized tag values when initially creating an observation from a photo, but after that the user can change the date observed. So don’t expect those two things to match up.

Discrepancy between the Observed: date at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28862644 (Jul 15, 2019 · 8:09 AM UTC) and the observed date on Identify (July 15, 2019 1:09 AM for me) are admittedly confusing: obs detail is showing the datetime in the time zone of the observation, while Identify is showing the datetime in the time zone of the viewer (this is why Cassi and I see different dates there). IMO, Identify should be changed to match obs detail and show the date observed in the time zone of the observation. Agreed?

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Sounds good to me.

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