It’s inevitable – despite good intentions, if there are multiple cameras at an event or on a trip, the timestamps on the pictures will be off.
A partial list of reasons I’ve encountered:
- Time zones,
- daylight savings time,
- never having set up the camera,
- using different time bases (i.e., cell phone, the clock in the car, the clock on the bank)
The easiest way to interleave pictures chronologically is to sort by time. This doesn’t work if time bases are different.
Fortunately, digital cameras add a bunch of data to the picture file called EXIF data. The trick is to be able to edit the EXIF data and time shift a group of pictures.
Last fall I discovered a tool that would do the job, but it was DOS based and required one to create DOS Batch files and all the fun that goes with that.
Today I went searching again and found this tool that did the job using a nice Windows interface. The hardest part was performing the base 60 and base 24 math to get the time offsets right. 😉
Once the times are aligned to my satisfaction, I find it useful to rename all the picture files based on the time stamp and possibly a subject. If you have 500 pictures in a folder, it can take a while for “sort by date” to operate as it has to open and examine every picture. If you rename by time stamp, you can “sort by name” which is MUCH faster. I use this free software.
As ever, YMMV and I’m not responsible if you download this tool and it screws up your system or your pictures. Be safe – always work on a COPY of your pictures.