Date Taken not working

[KevinS]

My latest submission just passed and I noticed that the "Date Taken" field is filled in with random dates, always with an earlier year. The incorrect date carries over to search results. Having that field auto-filled was a great convenience and having to correct it an unwelcome chore. Anyone else having this issue?

[Joseph Clemson]

My most recent batch was 23 images uploaded on Monday and cleared QC yesterday. They all seem to be OK in respect of the date taken field.

[Jill Morgan]

My submission from last week is fine.  Perhaps it was an in camera problem and there was no date in the EXIF data.

 

Jill

[KevinS]

Thanks for the replies. The correct date does display on my own website; exact same file uploaded to both sites. Time to ask CR, I think.

[vpics]

Which camera are you using?

 

[KevinS]

Using a Canon 6D. Date in the menu is correct, and displays correctly on my website and in software. I've sent a message to CR; awaiting response.

[cbimages]

My images always show the date that I last did any processing rather than date taken. I use 2 different cameras, date and time correct in both. And shown in EXIF. Kevin, please let us know what CR have to say.

[KevinS]

I'm sure AIM has been displaying the date taken for me in the past (10 years). I have to wonder why any customer would want to know the date of last modification rather than date taken. My message to CR has been forwarded to IT. 

[ReeRay]

Strange that, and one I experienced a few years back when I bought a new camera (Fuji). In my case just a few in a batch would default to 01/01/2000. The rest were accurate. This went on for months and CR were unable to help. Out of the blue, and without any amendments in my workflow, the problem disappeared. I never did get to the bottom of it.    

[Patrick Cooper]

What to do when you have a scanned film image and you can't remember what date the photo was taken? I can't see an option to leave the date blank in such circumstances. I guess it would be better to leave it blank rather than making up a date. 

[KevinS]

Patrick,

 

If I highlight the date taken (under optional), then hit Delete on my keyboard, the date field goes blank. I then click Save at the bottom and the field remains blank. I usually enter just a year on scanned images. 

[Patrick Cooper]

Kevin, thanks for the tip on removing the date. Sometimes with scanned images, I can't even remember the year! Of course that wouldn't be good for editorial images. 

[KevinS]

On 10/18/2017 at 18:54, cbimages said:

My images always show the date that I last did any processing rather than date taken. I use 2 different cameras, date and time correct in both. And shown in EXIF. Kevin, please let us know what CR have to say.

Sorry to say, CR wasn't much help. The dates in question were mostly correct; just the year was wrong! Several submissions have gone through since without the problem re-occurring. Here's the response;

 

"We’ve heard back from our technical team who have indicated that the field that pulls the Date information from IPTC was showing as blank for the images in that particular submission. They have supplied a screenshot to indicate the field that the data is pulled from, which I have attached.

 

They have advised that this information can now be entered manually through AIM"

No screenshot was attached.

 

I use Bridge to add info under the "Description" tab. The "Camera Data" tab is auto-filled from the camera. I ignore the IPTC tab, which only has my name auto-filled. Only on this one submission did that cause a problem; on 411 other submissions, no problem. I'll consider this a one-time fluke unless it happens again.

Edited October 27, 2017 by KevinS

[cbimages]

Thanks Kevin. It's still happening for my images, which is frustrating. They've all got IPTC data and date taken is correct. I use 2 different models of camera as well....so it can't be that. As most of my images are natural history, I guess it doesn't matter too much if the date taken is wrong if I forget/don't have time to go back and change every one.

 

[KevinS]

Jeff,

 

Yes, but the images have to be selected somehow. Either one at a time, or maybe use the 'Select all passed' box at the top of each submission, if you want to change all images in one submission. After you highlight the date you could just type in the new date and then 'Save' if all the images need the same date. I hope I understand your question. Shouldn't the date taken (created) remain the same even if re-processed?

 

cbimages,

 

Some of the images in my problem submission had a date 6 years earlier than the actual date taken. I'd rather not have a buyer think they were old if they're new. Changed all mine and I do think Alamy has a technical problem that they didn't actually look for. 

 

 

[RichardNixon]

This is something I've just noticed.  On my latest submission the "date taken"  seems to be more like "date uploaded"  the submission before that was a mixture, and all the ones prior to that have been accurate.

 

Is this something that will be addressed?  I can't honestly be bothered to go through images entering the dates taken, especially when it used to work fine, and when its in the "optional" section.  

 

I accept that these teething troubles will occur when there's a change to how the site works, but it is a bit irritating.

[Graham]

Not a recent problem, but old images pre-the revamped AIM always have the wrong date if the full date was not originally entered.  Under the old system, it was acceptable to insert just the year.  Then when the new AIM was introduced, it seems that if there was not already a full date, it automatically completed the date taken as 1 January [year]. Totally silly auto-completion: I now have thousands of images purportedly taken in January, whenever they were actually taken.  Why it could not have just accepted the previous year-only field I have no idea, although completing a searchable field with erroneous data the user did not enter seems a totally bizarre decision by someone.  Certainly life is far too short to go back to all my old images, check when they were actually taken and then put in the correct date. 

 

Graham