Can 'date-of-shot' data be changed on a file? New Member Query

[Highnooner]

Hello I am from Jordan. I am new here I like to ask a question. Can original camera files be altered to where the date of the shoot is changed? and is there a way to know that these files have been changed? Thanks

[Donald]

As advised in the 'New Member' thread, I have copied this message here, so that more people might see it and provide our new member with the answer.

[gilliebg]

I don't know if that is possible, however one can cheat! Take a photograph today, or use a photograph from an earlier date that you would like to use; open the new picture and the original in whatever software you are using, that can make collages; slide the original one over the one with the date you need, then flatten the image as you would in a collage, and voila! Make sure all your settings in the new date picture match the original, as those are the ones that will show the EXIF data.

[russellsnr]

Hi and welcome, In answer I don't no but in question,"Why would you want to change the date of a shoot"? as it has nothing to do with the overall content of a photograph.
Russ

[stuck]

Can original camera files be altered to where the date of the shoot is changed? and is there a way to know that these files have been changed? Thanks

If you mean can you change the date:
1) a) held within the file, in the EXIF data, then yes, you can get software to edit that tag.
b) of the file that you see when you look at the file attrubutes on a computer (e.g. in Windows Explorer) then yes, you can get software to touch those file attributes.
2) I doubt there is a simple way of knowing if either of these dates have been changed.

Ken

[Donald]

I think the biggest worry, as Russell has alluded to in his post, is to wonder why anyone would want to do such a thing unless it was for dishonest or deceitful purposes. It is certainly something that any reputable photographer would, I hope, find wrong.

[FrankMi]

I think the biggest worry, as Russell has alluded to in his post, is to wonder why anyone would want to do such a thing unless it was for dishonest or deceitful purposes. It is certainly something that any reputable photographer would, I hope, find wrong.

I think that only time when this would make sense to me is where the camera's date was not set properly and is totally wrong such as Jan 1, 2000 or some such date. Even then, I doubt I'd bother unless it was a special image.

[xpatUSA]

I think the biggest worry, as Russell has alluded to in his post, is to wonder why anyone would want to do such a thing unless it was for dishonest or deceitful purposes. It is certainly something that any reputable photographer would, I hope, find wrong.

It's quite a pain if the camera's internal memory battery is dead (e.g. the one inside a point-and-shoot that is charged from the main battery[s] and is not easily accessible and costs more than the camera is worth for the manufacturer to replace it). Then, if a service like Google's Picasa is used, the photos and albums do not upload in chronological order and you have to mess around on-line to re-position them. This does get irritating after a while . . just sold the Kodak last week for that very reason!

Ted

[rpcrowe]

Using Photoshop Elements 10, you simply right click on the image in the Organizer which will provide a drop down menu. Within that drop down menu is the selection: "Adjust Date and Time". With this selection, you can adjust the date/time to any point you wish. Just for fun, I adjusted a junk image to my birth date.

There is a problem in the use of digital imagery for evidence because of the manipulation which can be done on the images and the difficulty in determining if an image has or has not been manipulated.

Canon has an Original Data Security Kit (OSK-E3) which is "supposed" to authenticate that digital images have not been manipulated.

http://www.canon.co.jp/imaging/osk/osk-e3/index.html

However, apparently even this has been cracked by hackers...

http://www.securityweek.com/research...e-security-kit

[gilliebg]

I belonged to a site where one had to post a picture on the day it was taken; on one occasion I had forgotten to adjust my camera to daylight saving and the date was wrong; as I had legitimately taken the shot on the day required, I changed it. I learned how to do it as, in those days I had no idea how to make a composite picture, and my hard work kept appearing with no EXIF data. I didn't realise that one should extend the canvas of one shot to incorporate the rest and I was using a new file, upon which to paste my shots, which had no data. So I used the whole of one of the shots, and slid all the others, including a crop of the one I was using, onto that picture, so as to include the data. Dishonest? I don't think so.

[Andrew1]

Welcome to digital photography. As we all know, the content of any data file can be changed if one has the access to it so existing photo's are not immune to manipulation, for good or bad.

[Highnooner]

Hi
Great information guys thank you very much... I am glad I joined this wonderful community. My name is Tareq and my question on the "date" was raised because we at the Jordanian Photography Society are trying to rule whether one photo was taken by one photographer or another in a court dispute . The date can be a decisive factor if we can establish it is not changed; the file in question is a RAW canon file.
Tareq

[revi]

Can you change the date in formation in the RAW file? YES: as was said above, any file can be changed.

Can you show that the date was changed? That is more difficult to answer. If you have only the file in question, you can never prove (as in 'beyond reasonable doubt') it was NOT changed. If the file is changed, you could find inconsistencies within the file meta-data that show tampering with those meta-data.

In your case, there might be other useful information in the private data area or maker note sections of the meta-data (canon seems to store the camera serial number there, for instance)

Remco

[stuck]

Can you change the date in formation in the RAW file? YES: as was said above, any file can be changed.

Can you show that the date was changed? That is more difficult to answer. If you have only the file in question, you can never prove (as in 'beyond reasonable doubt') it was NOT changed. If the file is changed, you could find inconsistencies within the file meta-data that show tampering with those meta-data.

In your case, there might be other useful information in the private data area or maker note sections of the meta-data (canon seems to store the camera serial number there, for instance)

Remco

As Remco says, if all you have is the one RAW file in question then it will be almost impossible to show that the date in the EXIF data within the RAW has been edited. Your only hope will be if the date change means that another piece of the EXIF data can't be right, that sort of inconsistency would raise questions.

However, if you can compare the disputed picture with other pictures taken by the same camera "at the same time" then any inconsistency in the disputed picture's EXIF data might be easier to spot, again raising questions.

Ken

[Colin Southern]

we at the Jordanian Photography Society are trying to rule whether one photo was taken by one photographer or another in a court dispute . The date can be a decisive factor if we can establish it is not changed; the file in question is a RAW canon file. Tareq

Just keep in mind that a lot of other potentially useful information is also included, such as the serial number of the camera and the lens used - would be "interesting" to see who owned the camera with the serial number encoded in the metadata. Happy to extract it for you.

[Poider]

I recently toured the UK and Ireland, I took my Nikon D3100 and my Nokia N8, I took 6500 photos with the Nikon and 1200 photos with the Nokia, My problem is that the Nokia automatically updated itself to the corresponding time zone and I forgot to change the NIkon.
I cannot view the photos as a group as they keep going between cities, I can't view the files in chronological order, so now I am renaming each section of photos with a number at the front so that I can view then in order.
So yes there are legitimate reasons for changing the dates.
Peter

[darkslide]

I recently purchased a (generic) GPS unit to use with my DSLR as I like to retrieve exactly where I took any given shot. Sadly I 'trusted' the software and allowed the unit to override the camera time and date...need I say more!

Having decided to modify this setting half way through the day I was surprised to see the morning shots perfectly 'dated' and the afternoon shots seemingly taken 5 days earlier.

Simply opening the folder in Lightroom and selecting all the images having the wrong date, I was able to do a bulk mod there and then.

Sadly this doesn't answer the question as to being able to decide whether or not a date has been modified or not. Looking through the EXIF data incrusted by NIKON there seem to be a huge number of things encoded, but I haven't come across a discrete 'second' date hidden anywhere. (See here)