Time Issues.

[Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net>]

Hello list,

I would like some clarification on a very serious issue regarding time
in f-spot. I've searched the archives and came across several time when
this was brought up, but I have a specific twist on it. I'm using 0.4.0 
in Ubuntu, I don't think it's patched in any way.

The problem is that (I think) f-spot likes to change the time tags
whenever it imports a photo. "Image Created" seems to be set to the
current import time, "Image Generated" moved up a few hours (UTC?), and 
"Image Digitized" stays original, I think.

My case involves a photos that have been imported three times. The first
time was simply to get them off my camera and onto my laptop. The second
time, the directory on my laptop was copied to my desktop and imported.
Then, I installed Ubuntu, f-spot wasn't happy with its older data file,
so I wiped it and imported all my photos again.

At this point, the times on all of my photos are completely out of whack.

To demonstrate; Here is a photo that has gone through one proper import,
and then was used as a source for import in my desktop computer:

Image Created: 2007:10:27 01:47:45
Image Generated: 2007:08:16 16:52:33
Image Digitized: 2007:08:16 12:52:33

The time 12:52 should be the correct time. After a consecutive import:

Image Created: 2007:11:11 00:47:49
Image Generated: 2007:08:17 00:52:33
Image Digitized: 2007:08:16 12:52:33

I see that the "Image Created" date was changed to the date at import.
Less correctly. the "Image Generated" tag has changed again! It's now a
whole 180° out of phase with the time it was actually taken.

Furthermore, it means that at import, if in the EST time zone, and I 
take a photo after 8pm, it gets imported into a date folder that is a 
day ahead.

I know that I can use the time tool in f-spot to set the time right, but 
why are the times even changed? I read it has something to do with 
ordering and multiple sources, but doing so blindly seems downright 
wrong. f-spot should only modify the photo files in any way upon user 
consent. I had no idea that a simple action like importing my photos 
from the camera would alter the time stamps.

Is this all accurate, or am I actually doing something wrong? At the 
moment it looks like I have many hours of manual cleanup labour ahead of 
me. I would like to prevent this in the future.

Thanks!
--Pat