Capture time is not correct with new phone

[lukec52409310]

I've been using Lightroom CC for a few years (and now CC Classic) and it has always worked quite well with regards to getting the metadata out of my images and videos. However, I recently upgraded my phone from the Samsung Galaxy S6 to the S9+ and now I am having issues with the capture time of images taken with the selfie camera.

Images taken with the main back camera import fine into Lightroom, but images taken with the front-facing selfie camera, once imported into Lightroom, always have a capture time of when I coped them from the phone to my Macbook. I thought that perhaps the issue was with the phone but I can not find anyone else on Google having this issue. I've also done some tests of my own: I have some software which allows you to rename images based on the capture time stored in the meta data. When I use this software to rename the images, the images correctly rename to when the photo was taken. This shows that the image does contain the correct metadata capture time and it is Lightroom parsing the data incorrectly.

I have searched on these Adobe forums and seen some posts where there were people having issues with the capture time (not specifically with the S9+ however) but posts by Adobe staff say the issue was fixed. I'm running the latest version of Lightroom and my phone is fully updated too. Does anyone know how I may go around solving this issue? As it is very time consuming having to set the correct capture time one by one on each photo so that it orders them correctly.

I have taken some sample images using both cameras which I can upload if anyone needs to see an example.

Thanks

[johnrellis]

Upload one of the front-camera photos to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here.  I'll take a detailed look at the photo's metadata to see what might be going wrong.

[lukec52409310]

I have uploaded two photos here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_i31bB8IhDjtUjliIHT2nufnBpKIpoZG

One is using the main camera (20180917_104549) and the other the selfie camera (20180917_104600.jpg). The file name is the date the photo was taken. You should be able to see that when imported into Lightroom the selfie camera photo has a different capture time to the file name.

Thanks

[johnrellis]

I see the difference in capture times when they're imported into my LR 7.5. A quick examination with ExifTool doesn't show anything obviously wrong.  Later today I'll look more closely under the microscope.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

It took a bit of poking around -- the file 20180917_104600.jpg uses an invalid format for storing the capture date:

The EXIF standard requires ":" to separate year, month, and day, but the file uses "-" instead. It's a little weird that the back camera gets it right and the front camera gets it wrong -- you'd think they'd use the same exact code.

Some programs don't check for that, but obviously LR does. In general, LR and other Adobe products try to strictly follow the industry standards (which is a good thing). You should file a bug report with Samsung.

You can use the free (and very robust) Exiftool to fix the dates, using this command line:

exiftool -tagsfromfile @ -datetimeoriginal *.jpg

If you want to run this on photos already imported into LR, first select all of them and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File. Then run the Exiftool command line. Then do Metadata > Read Metadata From File.  Or use the Capture Time To Exif plugin, which makes it easier to run Exiftool on imported photos.

[lukec52409310]

Thank you for looking into that. I will try to report it to Samsung in that case then... although I imagine there is little chance they will see my report. I guess for now I will run the command you have written. Thanks again.

[johnrellis]

I did a quick Google for where to submit Samsung-specific bugs (which I'm pretty sure this is, not a generic Android bug), and didn't find any authoritative answer.

[lukec52409310]

I've only now got round to trying to sort this problem out with my photos using the tool you suggested. When I run the command from your screenshot I don't get the same results as you do. Instead I get (these are different photos but with the same camera):

Luke$ exiftool -exif:datetimeoriginal *.jpg
======== 20180816_223337.jpg
Date/Time Original              : 2018:08:16 22:33:37
======== 20180816_223351.jpg
Date/Time Original              : 2018:08:16 22:33:51
======== 20180816_223435.jpg
======== 20180816_223437.jpg
======== 20180816_223438.jpg

Where the last three images are photos taken with the front facing camera. Do you know if this is an issue with the version of the tool I have, or if it is something else I'm doing wrong?

Thanks again, you've been a big help with this and I appreciate it.

EDIT: I think I have solved my own issue with regards to why there is no date specified. I had followed your instructions of selecting the option of saving the metadata to the file in Lightroom and it appears to have overwritten the original date that was in there. I restored to the original file and I am now able to see the dates. I will now attempt to use the tool to correct the date time to the exif standard format.

EDIT 2: When running the command on the original files (without having saved the metadata from Lightroom) the command to correct the exif data appears to work correctly. Thanks again for your help.

[johnrellis]

Glad you got it sorted.