DateTimeOriginal: the date and time a photo was taken
DateTimeOriginal is the EXIF tag for the moment the shutter fired. Its format, why it has no time zone, and how it differs from CreateDate and ModifyDate.
What is DateTimeOriginal?
DateTimeOriginal
DateTimeOriginal is the EXIF tag, number 0x9003 in the Exif sub-directory, that records the date and time the image was captured. Its value is a fixed 19-character string, YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS, in the camera’s local time.
Note the colons in the date. EXIF uses them where most people expect dashes, which is why a value like 2026:03:14 15:09:26 looks odd the first time you see it.
Why is there no time zone?
The original format simply has no room for one. It records the numbers on the camera’s clock and nothing about where that clock was.
The standard later added companion tags to fill the gap:
| Tag | ID | Holds |
|---|---|---|
OffsetTimeOriginal |
0x9011 |
The UTC offset at capture, such as +02:00 |
SubSecTimeOriginal |
0x9291 |
Fractions of a second |
Our sample photo shows what happens without them. It carries DateTimeOriginal = 2026:03:14 15:09:26 and no offset tag at all, so the report can tell you the time on the clock but not the moment in UTC.
A recent phone fills both. On the iPhone 16 photo we tested, the dates alone ran to 21 fields: the capture time down to the millisecond, plus the time zone offset. That offset survived when we removed the location with the Photos app.
How does it differ from CreateDate and ModifyDate?
A photo usually carries three dates.
DateTimeOriginal: when the shutter fired.CreateDate: when the image was stored as digital data. The same moment for a camera, but not for a scan.ModifyDate: when the file was last changed. Every program that saves the file may update it.
Photo libraries sort by DateTimeOriginal, and some fall back on CreateDate. Change one without the other and the same picture can land on two different days depending on the app.
How do I change it?
In our metadata editor, the date field writes the same value to DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate and the XMP CreateDate in one go, so every program reads the same day. The full procedure, including a whole trip shot with a wrong camera clock, is in how to change photo metadata.