Old aged newbie needing help

[oriomenoni]

Hello,
I'm a 63 years old photographer and I messed up my work of today.
Somehow I had the wrong date in my camera: March 2 instead of March 30.
The problem is that the engine of the company I work for sorts out photos by exif date.
So I can not send them today's work because it would end up in a wrong place on their server.
I installed exiftool, renamed it exiftool.exe and placed it together with it's folder in the Windows
directory of my PC (I run Windows 10)
I have two problems to sort out:
1) exiftool can not find the images directory (which I renamed DIR and placed in the root folder of C drive)
Whenever i try (and I tried different locations) I always get the "can not find folder" error;
2) I am unsure of the command line to shift exif date by 28 days. By looking at the help file example
I was thinking of the following:
exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:28 0:0:0" DIR
I don't know if it's correct or wrong, or if there is a better way to do it.
I'm sorry to be seeking for help but I don't understand a thing about computers,
I'm just a photographer of the "old school", I grew up with film. Now my brain is not as flexible
as it used to be when i was young. So i really need your help here.
Thank you very much!

[Phil Harvey]

I'm a 63 years old photographer too, and I'm glad to help out.

Instead of typing the DIR folder name, drag and drop the folder onto the command line (after typing exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:28 0:0:0" followed by a SPACE).

- Phil

[oriomenoni]

Thank you very much. This action actually changes the day correctly, but sadly,
it seems to overwrite the original hour/minute/seconds info with new ones. 
I need those to stay as in the original
Is there anything that can be done about that?

[Phil Harvey]

This won't change the hour/minutes/seconds of DateTimeOriginal, but it will change the system FileModifyDate to the current date/time.  If you don't want to do this, add -P to preserve the original FileModifyDate, or adjust it as well as DateTimeOriginal.

If the DateTimeOriginal time did change, then show me the exact command you used because something must be wrong with it.

Use this command to see the DateTimeOriginal:

exiftool -datetimeoriginal FILE

- Phil

[oriomenoni]

What I mean is that the newly created files have brand new hour/minute/second info
along with the corrected date (rightfully shifted to March 30)
The _original files have the correct hour/minute/second info,
but I need that info inside the new date-shifted files.

I hope I explained it correctly - sorry I feel extremely confused!

what I did was dropping the folder into
exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:28 0:0:0"
like you instructed me

[oriomenoni]

Basically, I need what this action did to the year/month/day
while leaving the hour/minute/second alone

[Phil Harvey]

Your command should have done what you wanted.  We just need to figure out why it didn't.  Try these commands on one of the files.

1. Restore the original file:

exiftool -restore_original FILE

2. Change DateTimeOriginal with the -v2 option so we can see what was changed:

exiftool -v2 "-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:28 0:0:0" FILE

And show me the output of the 2nd command.

- Phil

[oriomenoni]

Let me say in advance, that I have no idea if I did what you asked the right way or not 
I seems to have done the first part right.    The command restored the original Raw file.
I then submitted that restored original file to the command line that you wrote for me,
and the computer returned me this huge text list:

Code Select Expand

  | | | 168) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7984 = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
  | | |    - Tag 0x7984 (40 bytes, int16s[20])
  | | | 169) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7810 = 1
  | | |    - Tag 0x7810 (1 bytes, int8u[1])
  | | | 170) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7811 = 0
  | | |    - Tag 0x7811 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 171) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7812 = 0
  | | |    - Tag 0x7812 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 172) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7813 = 1
  | | |    - Tag 0x7813 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 173) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7814 = 1024
  | | |    - Tag 0x7814 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 174) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7815 = 0 32 98 164 230 296 362 428 494 566
  | | |    - Tag 0x7815 (20 bytes, int16u[10])
  | | | 175) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7816 = 0 32 98 164 230 296 362 428 494 566
  | | |    - Tag 0x7816 (20 bytes, int16u[10])
  | | | 176) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7817 = 2
  | | |    - Tag 0x7817 (1 bytes, int8u[1])
  | | | 177) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7818 = 2
  | | |    - Tag 0x7818 (1 bytes, int8u[1])
  | | | 178) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7819 = 96
  | | |    - Tag 0x7819 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 179) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x781a = 0
  | | |    - Tag 0x781a (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 180) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x78a3 = 5940
  | | |    - Tag 0x78a3 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | | | 181) Sony_SR2SubIFD_0x7922 = 6000 4000
  | | |    - Tag 0x7922 (8 bytes, int32u[2])
  + [IFD1 directory with 16 entries]
  | 0)  SubfileType = 1
  |    - Tag 0x00fe (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 1)  Compression = 6
  |    - Tag 0x0103 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 2)  ImageDescription =
  |    - Tag 0x010e (32 bytes, string[32])
  | 3)  Make = SONY
  |    - Tag 0x010f (5 bytes, string[5])
  | 4)  Model = ILCE-9M3
  |    - Tag 0x0110 (9 bytes, string[9])
  | 5)  Orientation = 8
  |    - Tag 0x0112 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 6)  XResolution = 72 (72/1)
  |    - Tag 0x011a (8 bytes, rational64u[1])
  | 7)  YResolution = 72 (72/1)
  |    - Tag 0x011b (8 bytes, rational64u[1])
  | 8)  ResolutionUnit = 2
  |    - Tag 0x0128 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 9)  Software = ILCE-9M3 v3.00
  |    - Tag 0x0131 (15 bytes, string[15])
  | 10) ModifyDate = 2025:03:02 09:57:43
  |    - Tag 0x0132 (20 bytes, string[20])
  | 11) Artist = Orio Menoni
  |    - Tag 0x013b (12 bytes, string[12])
  | 12) ThumbnailOffset = 44094
  |    - Tag 0x0201 (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 13) ThumbnailLength = 9398
  |    - Tag 0x0202 (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 14) YCbCrPositioning = 2
  |    - Tag 0x0213 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 15) Copyright = (c) Orio Menoni
  |    - Tag 0x8298 (16 bytes, string[16] read as undef[16])
  + [IFD2 directory with 16 entries]
  | 0)  SubfileType = 1
  |    - Tag 0x00fe (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 1)  ImageWidth = 6000
  |    - Tag 0x0100 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 2)  ImageHeight = 4000
  |    - Tag 0x0101 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 3)  BitsPerSample = 8 8 8
  |    - Tag 0x0102 (6 bytes, int16u[3])
  | 4)  Compression = 7
  |    - Tag 0x0103 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 5)  PhotometricInterpretation = 6
  |    - Tag 0x0106 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 6)  ImageDescription =
  |    - Tag 0x010e (32 bytes, string[32])
  | 7)  Orientation = 8
  |    - Tag 0x0112 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 8)  SamplesPerPixel = 3
  |    - Tag 0x0115 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 9)  PlanarConfiguration = 1
  |    - Tag 0x011c (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 10) JpgFromRawStart = 507904
  |    - Tag 0x0201 (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 11) JpgFromRawLength = 2006143
  |    - Tag 0x0202 (4 bytes, int32u[1])
  | 12) YCbCrCoefficients = 0.299 0.587 0.114 (299/1000 587/1000 114/1000)
  |    - Tag 0x0211 (24 bytes, rational64u[3])
  | 13) YCbCrSubSampling = 2 1
  |    - Tag 0x0212 (4 bytes, int16u[2])
  | 14) YCbCrPositioning = 2
  |    - Tag 0x0213 (2 bytes, int16u[1])
  | 15) ReferenceBlackWhite = 0 255 128 128 128 128 (0/1 255/1 128/1 128/1 128/1 128/1)
  |    - Tag 0x0214 (48 bytes, rational64u[6])
    1 image files read
    1 files could not be read
I hope that this is what you were expecting

PH Edit: Put output in code block

[oriomenoni]

Would you like me to send you one of the raw files for you to test it?

[Phil Harvey]

That was not at all what I wanted.  Your -v2 output is from a command to read the file, not to write DateTimeOriginal.  The fact that it said "1 files could not be read" likely indicates a syntax error in the argument of your command which is supposed to update DateTimeOriginal.  But I can't tell you exactly what the problem was because it likely scrolled off the top of your pasted output.

- Phil