Railfan Technology > I'm losing all my metadata from my Canon cameras

I just tried to do an electronic submission of a handful of photos to an RR magazine, both jpegs and raw files shot with my Canon 70D, and the recipient tells me that all the metadata got stripped off. This is a big deal to them since they are using the date stamp to arrange candidate photos of the railfan event in question, and my pix don't contain that data.

I just went back and realized that all of the pix I've backed up on my backup drives (linked to a Windows 7 laptop) lost all their metadata when they were copied to the drive. The date created, date modified, and date accessed all come out the same, and appear to match the time they were copied onto the drive and not the time they were taken.

Curiously, the select images I loaded directly onto my iPad retained all their data.

Like most railfans, I shoot a lot more images than I really use. Ordinarily, I just pull the photos I want off of my backup drive, run them through Photoshop Elements, and then route them either to a printer, or back to the backup drive. Honestly, I hadn't noticed the lack of metadata until now.

So now the question: as it happens, I still have the photos the magazine wants on the camera memory card. How do I get them to the publisher without getting the dates stripped off? I tried pulling them off the card directly to the upload file transfer system they use (ie using a card reader, without using Windows to same them on my computer) and the metadata got stripped off anyway.

At wits end here... any advice welcome.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/15/18 09:46 by march_hare.

Have you talked to Canon?

No, figured it might be something so simple that it didn't warrant that. I'm not exactly a computer whizz, so an explanation that begins with "you flaming idiot, it's THIS" seems fairly likely.

march_hare Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No, figured it might be something so simple that
> it didn't warrant that. I'm not exactly a
> computer whizz, so an explanation that begins with
> "you flaming idiot, it's THIS" seems fairly
> likely.

Instead of merely "copying" your files or transferring them over the network, you might need to use a back up software where there's an option to preserve the time stamp of each file ("mirror" the files, for example). What happened to you is actually normal, since copying/backing up/uploading presumes you are retaining the original, so the copied files get the time stamp of the copying event.

Unfortunately, I can't help you at the moment, since I've kept the original media of the photos and videos that I consider important, so I haven't had the need to preserve the original metadata to my backed up files. Hopefully, I was successful in describing the basic principles behind what happened to you.

Off topic, but when you "move" files instead of "copy," the original time stamp is preserved, because the operating system knows that the original time stamp will be lost otherwise.

Most images from a camera have what is called EXIF metadata embedded in the file. You shouldn't lose the EXIF metadata by copying the file. Most decent photo editors should preserve the metadata. The EXIF metadata contains all kinds of information like the date & time of the exposure, shutter speed, f-stop, focal length, exposure modes etc. I use a program called EXIFtool GUI to view metadata in my images.
Mark



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/18 21:33 by baumback.

baumback Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most images from a camera have what is called EXIF
> metadata embedded in the file. You shouldn't lose
> the EXIF metadata by copying the file. Most decent
> photo editors should preserve the metadata. The
> EXIF metadata contains all kinds of information
> like the date & time of the exposure, shutter
> speed, f-stop, focal length, exposure modes etc. I
> use a program called EXIFtool GUI to view metadata
> in my images.
> Mark

I'm guessing the magazine in question doesn't want to look at each and every EXIF of all the photos being submitted - they simply want to use the Operating System's file manager and quickly sort it in chronological order.

Iwhat program did you use for your backup.

I use a simple drag and drop, the files are copied as is from the computer to backup drive, with a simple copy nothing should be lost.

If you are using some software it maybe some option that strips the meta out in the copy.

Anyway, I like to stick with the old fashioned ways so I now what is going on.

Bob

I don't have Microsoft Windows, but a search seem to say that robocopy (command line) or richcopy (GUI) have options to restore original date/time when copying files between drives.

What I was getting at what was the original method of "copying".
If you are truly copying there should be no change of the file data, as noted the meta data is embedded in the file.

If you are doing some type of archiving then the date data could be changed.
Looking at the prior post, that type of command could retrieve the original information which could still be stored.

One way would be to look through all the meta fields to see if information is store. There are programs which will extract the raw meta data and the date should pop out in all the garble.

Bob

I would check your editing software that you use to process your photos. I suspect there may be some 'export' setting option that may be stripping the EXIF information. I've been using simple-minded Windows copy & paste to move my files around (including backup) and never encountered a problem like yours. Perhaps an update to your editing software changed something? Oh yes, I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.