Timezone legal in Exif DateTime tag?

[Archive]

[Originally posted by bugmenot on 2007-04-09 16:51:40-07]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if the date/time format mentioned in the ExifTool FAQ , i.e. "YYYY:MM:DD hh:mm:ss[+-]hh:mm" is actually legal in an Exif tag, or only in an XMP tag?  I ask because all the Exif documentation I can find tells me that date/time tags are limited to 20 characters (therefore no room for the timezone offset), but ExifTool will quite happily write more than 20 characters into, say, Exif:DateTimeOriginal, and the other tools I've tried all seem to read such files without complaint.  I want to add timezone data to my images, but not in any way that will make them unreadable to any tool that's fussy about what it will accept...

Cheers,

Scott.

[Archive]

[Originally posted by exiftool on 2007-04-09 17:49:58-07]

You are correct, timezone is not part of the EXIF specification although
exiftool will let you write it.  The only way to write timezone information
in a way that is 100% compatible with the EXIF specification is to use the
GPSTimeStamp tag, which is specified in UTC.  Therefore the timezone
can be deduced as the difference between this and the other times in
the image.  Although this is allowed by the specification, I don't think
there is any software out there that will take advantage of this to
determine the time zone.

- Phil

[Archive]

[Originally posted by cocker68 on 2007-04-09 17:52:04-07]

Hello,

I don't think this is legal use of this tag.

But I overcome this limitation by (mis)using GPSDateStamp/GPSTimeStamp, which stores UTC, while other date/time-fields usually store local time.

- Cocker :wq

[Archive]

[Originally posted by exiftool on 2007-04-09 17:56:47-07]

Hey, there's Cocker -- the one who gave me the idea to use GPTTimeStamp.

http://www.cpanforum.com/threads/4460" target="_blank">Here is the original thread

- Phil

[Archive]

[Originally posted by bugmenot on 2007-04-09 21:43:25-07]

Many thanks guys, that seems like exactly what I need.  Guess I should have searched a bit harder before asking the question though...

Cheers,

Scott.