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ZimFromIRK
ZimFromIRK
Inspiring
March 16, 2026
Answered

Edit Capture Time for a number of photos sets the wrong time

  • March 16, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 46 views

I’m using Lightroom Classic 15.2 release and Camera Raw 18.2 on Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200 Build 26200.

I scanned 20 negatives to 92% JPG with my Epson PerfectionV800 Photo using Silverfast 9 and gave them sequential names so they would sort correctly when sorted by Filename. I now want to set the Capture Date so they sort correctly when sorted by date.

I selected the first photo and used Shift-Click to select the last photo in the folder (roll) so all photos are selected.  I then used Metadata->Edit Capture Time and set the Date/Time to 1/1/1967 12:00:00 AM 000ms, which is the scheme that I use when I know only the year.  

The result: the first photo was set correctly, but the rest were set like this (still sorted by name):

01/01/1967 12:00:00.000 AM
12/31/1966 11:59:59.000 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:58.827 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:58.827 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:58.827 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:59.000 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:58.827 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:59.000 PM
12/31/1966 11:59:59.000 PM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.000 AM
12/31/1966 11:59:59.000 PM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.125 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.227 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.124 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.123 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.229 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.034 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.225 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.132 AM
01/01/1967 12:00:00.118 AM

(I added leading zeroes where needed to make this easier to read.)

I’ve now done this numerous times and the results always seem to be the same. I changed them all to a different date and changed it back and got the same results above. It makes no sense to me that photos 2-8 would be dated earlier than the date I set.

What I’d actually like: when setting the capture time on multiple photos, advance the milliseconds or even the seconds by a small amount so the photos sort in the order that I selected.  Failing that, at least honoring the date/time I requested would be helpful.

To reproduce, just select a set of photos in a folder and set the date/time as above.

    Correct answer johnrellis

    [View this post in your web browser. It contains formatting and images that don't appear in email.]

     

    When you invoke Edit Capture Time > Adjust To A Specified Date And Time on multiple photos, it shifts all the capture times of the  photos by the amount that you changed the first photo:

     

    Silverfast didn’t set the EXIF capture dates of the scans, so when you imported them, LR used the files’ modified date/times (when the files were created by Silverfast) as the capture date. You then renamed the files in some order other than the order that the files were scanned. Then when you sorted the files by file name in LR, they were no longer ordered by capture date.

     

    When you then selected all the files, invoked Edit Capture Time, and entered 1/1/1967 12:00:00 AM, it subtracted some number n seconds from the first file to get to that new date/time.  It then subtracted the same number n from all the remaining files.

     

    To get the effect you want, use the the Capture Time to Exif plugin to assign increasing capture times to the selected photos.  I’ve been using a similar plugin for many years to manage my 20K scanned slides.

    1 reply

    johnrellis
    johnrellisCorrect answer
    Legend
    March 16, 2026

    [View this post in your web browser. It contains formatting and images that don't appear in email.]

     

    When you invoke Edit Capture Time > Adjust To A Specified Date And Time on multiple photos, it shifts all the capture times of the  photos by the amount that you changed the first photo:

     

    Silverfast didn’t set the EXIF capture dates of the scans, so when you imported them, LR used the files’ modified date/times (when the files were created by Silverfast) as the capture date. You then renamed the files in some order other than the order that the files were scanned. Then when you sorted the files by file name in LR, they were no longer ordered by capture date.

     

    When you then selected all the files, invoked Edit Capture Time, and entered 1/1/1967 12:00:00 AM, it subtracted some number n seconds from the first file to get to that new date/time.  It then subtracted the same number n from all the remaining files.

     

    To get the effect you want, use the the Capture Time to Exif plugin to assign increasing capture times to the selected photos.  I’ve been using a similar plugin for many years to manage my 20K scanned slides.

      ZimFromIRK
      ZimFromIRKAuthor
      Inspiring
      March 17, 2026

      Hi John: thanks for the fantastic reply. I read this sentence as applying only to the “shift by set number of hours” and not “adjust to a specific date and time”. I did consider that it was somehow using the original capture filestamp time but since each scan, with the separate infra-red scan, takes minutes I couldn’t see why the times were just off by a second or two.

      Now I realize that I scanned the negatives into an EpsonScan folder, which is my Lightroom “auto import” folder, but I didn’t have Lightroom running. After scanning, I launched Lightroom which quickly imported the 20 scans and that must have reset the modified time so all files were within several seconds -- some before, some after my reference photo. I then renamed the files in Lightroom, locking in the incorrect timestamps.

      I’ll take a look at the plugin that you recommended. However, I had another idea: if I set the file creation time to my target time, I can use Edit Capture Time to propagate that into the EXIF timestamp by using the Change to File Creation Date option for each image.  I wrote a little Powershell script to set the times, and it worked. As an added bonus, Lightroom reset the file date created/modified/accessed date back to the current date and time when it wrote the EXIF metadata into the JPG files.

      While this is not as convenient as doing this within Lightroom, I didn’t have to synchronize the Lightroom folder first, so not too onerous. Here’s the script for anyone that might find it useful. It set my 20 files to 1967-01-01 00:00:00 and made each file in the folder (sorted by name) 50 milliseconds newer than the last. Be sure you understand how this works before using it.

      $path       = "$pwd"                            # current working directory
      $startTime  = Get-Date "1967-01-01 00:00:00"    # target date and time
      $interval   = 50                                # increment each image by milliseconds

      $i = 0

      Get-ChildItem -Path $path -File | Sort-Object Name | ForEach-Object {
          $newTime          = $startTime.AddMilliseconds($i * $interval)
          $_.CreationTime   = $newTime
          $_.LastWriteTime  = $newTime
          $_.LastAccessTime = $newTime
          $i++
      }

      Thanks again!

       

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