Any experts on metadata here?

penno116

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Hello people I am after a technical answer to a question here and would greatly appreciate anyone's expert views.

If I have a photograph and look at the data which says date picture taken was say today, but the person who took the photograph wants me to believe it was taken say a year ago and their explanation for this is that it was taken on one device sent to another device (mobile phones) then downloaded to a computer, the transfer from devices happened today so it is claimed that is why it says the picture was taken today.

I'm 99.99% certain that the transferring process will not change this data, if it could please someone correct me, but I would like to know why the date picture taken data will not change when a photo is moved from device to device.

Thanks in advance.
 
EXIF data shouldn't change on copying from system to system - file creation/modification date on the system may change but EXIF data will stay intact on simple file copy operations but may be wiped or changed if imge files are edited/processed and of course may be edited completely using suitable exif editors such as linked to above.

Jim
 
As above it wont change while moving around, it is embedded data so takes a bit of effort to change it. Just think of it as part of the construct of the file. It can be altered but not by accident
 
As above it wont change while moving around, it is embedded data so takes a bit of effort to change it.

Agreed - but from the OP's post it's not entirely clear what they mean by "metadata" :)

Jim
 
If the image was sent from 1 mobile to another via an app this might either strip out the data or could even reset it to something new.

You could also have a time/date issue depending on the location of each phone. Say for example someone in a different time zone.

But as the OP has said its a year in terms of date value. That can be done by creating a file on a camera with the wrong date/time and then replacing the actual image with something else.
 
shotokan101 said:
Agreed - but from the OP's post it's not entirely clear what they mean by "metadata" :)

Jim

I'm meaning if you right click properties and "date picture taken".

pixelpixel said:
If the image was sent from 1 mobile to another via an app this might either strip out the data or could even reset it to something new.

You could also have a time/date issue depending on the location of each phone. Say for example someone in a different time zone.

But as the OP has said its a year in terms of date value. That can be done by creating a file on a camera with the wrong date/time and then replacing the actual image with something else.


Thanks for the input everyone much appreciated. As above it is not an exact year change so an incorrectly set phone/camera is ruled out.

I'm limited what I can say in terms of how this has come about but I speak to a person and they say that they have a photograph of a particular subject, so I ask to see said subject. Given the date picture taken it is possible they simply went and took the photo when I asked to see it, then forwarded it on to me. But they say that's not the case because it was taken ages ago and the date picture taken must have somehow accidentally been changed during transfer from one device to another. No apps have been used as its not that kind of device.

Possible or not?
 
simplicity96 said:
As above it wont change while moving around, it is embedded data so takes a bit of effort to change it. Just think of it as part of the construct of the file. It can be altered but not by accident

As said previous then this is not a accidental thing.
 
Is the rest of the exif data intact, does it show the camera model, focal length etc.? If it does then I doubt anything has touched the date taken field, I find some editing applications and web services wipe the exif data and replace it with a basic set of their own but it's quite obvious that has happened.

John
 
Johnmcl7 said:
Is the rest of the exif data intact, does it show the camera model, focal length etc.? If it does then I doubt anything has touched the date taken field, I find some editing applications and web services wipe the exif data and replace it with a basic set of their own but it's quite obvious that has happened.

John

Yeh make &model of camera, focal length, f-number, exposure time, metering mode are all present!
 
An exif metadata editor should leave a tag somewhere so you can see it has been used to change something.
 

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