# Determining EXIF data on a digital photo



## graceawong (Feb 10, 2011)

Hi,

I've been looking for information for this topic for a couple of days now, but so far am not having any luck, so asking seems like the next best thing to do... 

In any event, I have a series of old digital photos (well, old being a relative term - from back in 2005). When my little guy was born, we had some friends visiting and he took a whole schwack of photos. Back then, he had just bought the camera and wasn't aware of how to download the pics onto a PC (in fact, they didn't even own a computer yet back then). He wanted to make sure we had some copies, so he went to a camera shop and paid to have them downloaded off the camera and burned onto a CD. Now here's where my question comes in - when I look at the photos in ACDSee (Pro v.3.0), it would appear that all the EXIF data showing up are from the date they were downloaded and burned - NOT when they were taken. I've looked through all the EXIF data for most of the pics, and they all show the same pattern. However, I want to know when they were taken. Because of this error (and how it happened, I'm not sure), my ordering scheme for storing the pics is all screwed up (and yes, I'm that anal when it comes to organizing my pics). Is there *any* way to figure out when the pics were *actually* taken??

And this brings up another point. My husband and I bought a Fuji FinePix 2600 back in 2002, and it worked just fine (at least as far as taking actual pictures went) until it died four years later. Once again, I'm looking at a bunch of old pics, and for whatever reason (I'm just discovering this now - urk), not all of the pictures we took had the EXIF data properly inserted. For example, I'll be looking at a series of photos that were taken in succession - a few seconds apart - and one or two of them won't have *any* EXIF data inserted at all. Now logic dictates when they were taken, especially since they were taken in succession - but it's just darned annoying to have to guess, especially if I don't have to. So I guess this all ties in with my first question - how to determine the actual creation date of a digital picture when the EXIF data is either all screwed up or non-existent??

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you,

Grace


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## Big Mike (Feb 10, 2011)

If the EXIF Data has been removed, altered or otherwise played with...I really don't think you can get the original data back.


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## graceawong (Feb 10, 2011)

Big Mike said:


> If the EXIF Data has been removed, altered or otherwise played with...I really don't think you can get the original data back.



*sigh* I was afraid you were going to say that... :\


Thanks,

Grace


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## Big Mike (Feb 10, 2011)

The one thing that I might suggest trying...would be to use camera brand software.  For example, each camera usually comes with some type of photo viewing/editing software.  If you can use that software with the photos from that brand of camera, it might read the EXIF data.

But I'd think that it's a long shot.  If ACDSee or Photoshop can't see it....it's probably not there.


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## Edsport (Feb 10, 2011)

Try this. Jeffrey's Exif viewer


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