Storm photographs and camera time settings

[Tim Vasquez]

I thought it might be a good idea to remind the chasing community to check the date/times on their digital cameras today to make sure they're accurate. That's especially warranted with another big day brewing. Given the proliferation of radar and mesonet information and the VORTEX2 experiment I think there's going to be growing interest in resolving some of the storm structure photographs people are getting with measured data. Most of you all are posting images with detailed EXIF data whether you're aware of it or not.

In that respect, for those of you viewing pics, I did find a good add-on that integrates EXIF viewing in Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905/

So using that plug-in, you can right-click on most web photos, including a ton of images posted in our Target Area DISC threads, and bring up time/date information, camera make and model, and sometimes GPS coordinates. For instance I can click on Bob Schafer's picture that starts the 5/18/10 DISC thread and see that he was using a HP Photosmart M540 and that the picture was taken at 0017 UTC.

Regarding the camera's time zone, it's all a matter of personal preference, of course, but if you go with UTC there won't be any ambiguity when you're going through photos many years from now wondering about an old April photo and whether the camera was set to standard or daylight time.

Tim

 

[Willoughby Owen]

Great idea Tim. It's probably especially important and easy to forget for chasers that reside in other time zones to change the time on their cams.

I'd imagine it would be a bit of a chore for the crop of chasers that live in Denver.