Correct capture date in LR CC

[savet94957326]

Hello members! Where in Lightroom CC can one find the original date that a photo was taken? I notice the capture date doesn't always show the correct date but is there anywhere else on LR CC this can be found? TIA for your help!

[D Fosse]

There's no way to know beyond what the camera embedded in metadata. If the camera isn't correctly set, how can Lightroom know?

[Just Shoot Me]

No.

The Capture Date and Time is included in the image file by the date and time you have set the camera to. If you have not set the camera correctly then no other program can tell when a image was taken.

[johnrellis]

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"I notice the capture date doesn't always show the correct date"

There are a couple of possibilities: The photo file doesn't contain an industry-standard capture date in its metadata (in which case bugs in LR cause it to often display "capture date" inconsistently); or the file does contain an industry-standard capture date but LR isn't reading it for some reason.

Initial troubleshooting steps:

1. In Library, select one of the photos, go to the Metadata panel on the right, and select the EXIF and IPTC tagset:

Then look for the fields EXIF > Date Time Original and IPTC > Date Created. What are the exact values contained in both of those fields?  If they show the same value as LR shows for Capture Date in the default tagset, then LR is accurately displaying the capture date contained in the photo.

2. If those two fields differ from what LR shows as Capture Date, upload the sample photo to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here, and we can determine whether this is a LR problem or a problem with the photo.

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[savet94957326]

Thanks for this. I tried your trouble shooting steps and some photos have matching dates, while others don't. Even for the ones that have matching dates, upon further investigation, we found that the camera settings were wrong so there's so much to consider but it's all starting to make sense bit by bit!

[GoldingD]

Also, and this may have been fixed. IF you are looking at capture time related metadata as shown in MACOS Finder, and that does not match what is shown in LrC, that is a MACOS quirk, Now what does the photo show if the card is in camera?

Think I fouled that up, other members can clarify.

[savet94957326]

Hi! Most of our photos were given/shared with us for use so we don't have access to the original SD cards/cameras. Now I'm using the EXIF date information as the most accurate date but even this is slightly tricky for instances where the wrong camera settings were used.