What can I glean from this partially stripped EXIF?

[CasualOnlineDog]

This doesn't really have any practical use, but it got me interested in the EXIF standard. I was recently sent a batch of resized iPhone images with the EXIF data partially stripped in a weird way. The exposure and camera data is intact, but the DateTimeOriginal field is missing. DateTime, GPSDateStamp, GPSTimeStamp, and most other GPS data fields are all present and valid, and the GPS date/time is identical to DateTime plus the UTC offset. I don't know what image editing software was used for resizing.

In my experience not all image editing software alters the DateTime field when resizing. Is it likely the GPS date/time fields (and hence DateTime) represent the actual time of digitization, assuming they weren't manually altered with something like ExifTool?

[CasualOnlineDog]

Example:

Code Select Expand


DateTime 2015:08:27 09:32:41
GPSTimeStamp 16:32:40.23
GPSDateStamp 2015:08:27


[Phil Harvey]

I couldn't imagine any other valid use for  the GPS date/times.

- Phil