Date Taken

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Date Taken

Postby rowerman » Sat Aug 30, 2008 7:23 am

Hello Jim, hello all,

I'm facing the following problem: pictures taken with my Nikon D80 DSLR camera have according to EXIF specification v2.2.1 in total 3 different Date-Time-fields:

a) DateTime
b) DateTimeOriginal
c) DateTimeDigitized

BRU offers in Auto Date (8) a lot of choices, but only one for the "Taken"-info. Unfortunately, BRU seems to take the most recent date-time-info available in one of those 3 fields and use this as the taken info (http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=366&p=1336&hilit=date+taken#p1336). All I need are two more choises in this selection field: Taken (Original) and Taken (Digitized). Why?

While taking pictures, these 3 date-time infos are identical and everything is fine. BUT: modern DLSR offer some editing features (b/w, color-filters, D-lighting, ...) and when applying these, the DateTimeDigitized-Info (c) gets modified with the actual date-time.

However, Nikon numbers the newley edited picture just subsequently, even the prefix gets altered. So, let's say I've taken a picture DSC_0013.jpg yesterday at exactly 2008:08:28 12:00:00. All three date-time-info fields will now hold this date-time.
When using the D-lighting feature of the camera while sitting by a drink and reviewing/optimizing some pictures, this one may be altered to CSC_1304.jpg with date-time-info (a) and (b) as above, but (c) DateTimeDigitized gets changed to 2008:08:28 21:37:12.

Finally, since BRU is using the most recent date-time-info in one of the three fields, this pictures get a taken-timestamp of 21:37 - even it was originally taken at 12:00.

All I want is to easily compare the original with the edited picture and therefore need the taken info. As you can see, the numbering is scrambled and the BRU-taken info doesn't help either. Having some thousands of images after a vacation, this is nearly a not solvable problem. I believe that this issue will become more common as more DSLR will be on the market. Unfortunately the support of this great program will retire by end of 2008.

However, all I want is to sort the images vom old to new and use therefore the "Taken"-info, but more specific. I need exactly what Nikon holds in the (b) DateTimeOriginal timestamp. So, even the "Suggestion" block is already closed, I'd like to request Jim as the author of this really great program to add those two more "Type-"fields to the Auto-Date (8)-field in order to solve above tasks. I'm pretty sure that a lot of users will require this feature in future.

new:
Taken (Original) -> excatly what DateTimeOriginal (b) holds as timestamp
Taken (Digitized) -> exactly what DateTimeDigitized (c) holds as timestamp

altered/new/modified:
Taken (Recent) -> behaviour as known: most recent date out of the three fields
Taken -> exactly what DateTime (a) holds as timestamp

Thank you very much for such an excellent program, I hope you can benevolently look into this request/issue and come up with a solution one day,

best regards,
rowerman

PS: the EXIF-specification can be found at: http://www.exif.org/Exif2-2.PDF. Page 36 lists b) and c), but not very much explanation.
rowerman
 
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Re: Date Taken

Postby Admin » Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:45 am

Hi,

I will see if I can get this change made. No promises, but I will try. I am planning a "final, final" release sometime in September/October so I will see if this can be included.

I would not be adding extra columns to the main list, and the new dates could not be used in the "change timestamp" feature, but they could be used in the "autodate" features



Jim

Edit: It would be immensely useful if you could let me have a sample file which you *know* contains different dates. That will allow me to test my changes.
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Re: Date Taken

Postby rowerman » Sun Aug 31, 2008 8:34 pm

Hi Jim,

thank you for the fast response. I have 3 pictures prepared and doublechecked. No idea on how to share them. If you send me an email, I'll pass them by - or any other alternative will be fine. Size in total <300k.

Best regards,
rowerman
rowerman
 
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Re: Date Taken

Postby Admin » Sun Aug 31, 2008 9:35 pm

Please email the pictures to photos at jimwillsher.co.uk

Cheers,


Jim
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Re: Date Taken

Postby Admin » Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:16 am

Many thanks for the feedback, this will be included in the next release.


Jim
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