Old digital camera photos do not retain original EXIF data when copied

Compumind said:

Hmm...

This is not good. EXIF data should be read-only, unless you have a specific program to manipulate it.
I will now have to mark all image/video files as Read-Only when I download them from the camera.

I think that this might be a bug in Windows with regard to EXIF data tagging in a single file.
Have to do some research on this.

I have some good news. I hooked up my phone to my laptop with a USB cable. I then copied over the same photo again to my desktop. I renamed this 20221116_211205d.jpg. This copy retained the same Exif date taken and size as the original.

I would like to repeat that with File Explorer the original date and time are retained for all photos in the Date and Date taken columns. It is strange even when it seems the Exif date and time have been changed.



For me the problem is with the Phone Link app. If I use it to drag and drop a photo to my desktop the Exif date and size are changed. I will continue to use the Phone Link app but for most purposes but will have to remember its limitations.

I checked drag and drop from phone to PC using Samsung´s DeX. The EXIF info and the photo size are preserved in the transfer.

DeX is used to operated the phone wirelessly from the PC screen. It does not require an MS account, but only works in S and Z series phones.

Anibor said:

I checked drag and drop from phone to PC using Samsung´s DeX. The EXIF info and the photo size are preserved in the transfer.

DeX is used to operated the phone wirelessly from the PC screen. It does not require an MS account, but only works in S and Z series phones.

DeX works fine with my Samsung S21. However, during the initial setup I am required to hook up the phone to my PC with a USB cable. To continue I am requires my to disable Link to Windows on my phone. Phone Link on Windows requires Link to Windows on the phone. I could restart Link to Windows after DeX is running so that Phone Link works again. This way both programs can work at the same time.

That is too much bother because I would have to go through all this every time I started my computer. Since I find Phone Link more useful I uninstalled Dex.

This ...

MisterEd said:

The Exif data is embedded in the image file itself. It can only be changed by a program that can modify this data. It is impossible for a simple thing like copying the image file to change the Exif data.

I think you're looking at a date field (which is "owned" by Windows), rather than the date-taken field (which is part of the image file's EXIF data).

margrave55 said:

This ...


I think you're looking at a date field (which is "owned" by Windows), rather than the date-taken field (which is part of the image file's EXIF data).

You are right. The program I used was supposed to be extracting the EXIF data. I rechecked these photos with an online program and found that the original program I used may have gotten the date wrong. It seems the EXIF date may not have been changed on any of the photos I had. I will have to research this further and see if I need to find another offline EXIF viewer program.

x509 said:

Not surprising, since EXIF metadata is not well understood by most people.


As I mentioned earlier, look at EXIFToolGUI, which is exactly what it does for command-line EXIFTool.

Thanks. That works a lot better.