Photos "convert" before airdropping to iMac

[MlleJules]

Hi, I'm a photographer and naturally am now sometimes using my iPhone 7 Plus as my go-to camera when I'm not hauling my Canon.

I already have an organisation/folder/Lightroom catalogue structure on my iMac, and I care about EXIF data. For editorial/journalism topics, in particular, date and time are important.

I know that if I download my iPhone photos from, say, iCloud, then the photos will have the date of download as the creation date. That sucks. So, I airdrop from my iPhone to my iMac instead, as this preserves the creation date.

But this tactic is not working for *some* photos. There is nothing remarkable about them. They are distributed randomly. I've not edited them before. The date and location is preserved on my phone just fine, and in iCloud too. But when airdropped, my iMac says creation date "today".

The airdrop wheel provides a clue: first it says waiting, and then sending, normally. For these photos, it says waiting, then converting, then sending.

Googling this hasn't provided any clues. It's frustrating to have the wrong dates and I'd like to have a fix for it, but also I'm just really, really puzzled and curious!

Ta,
Jules

 

[Shadow Jolteon]

I believe the setting you're looking for is this: On your iPhone, go to Settings » Photos, then scroll all the way to the bottom. Change the value of "Transfer to Mac or PC" to "Keep Originals". I believe this will transfer your AirDropped files without changing them.

 

[MlleJules]

I was really really hopeful that would work. It didn't.

It still says "converting" before sending and I end up with a creation date of "now".

 

[Shadow Jolteon]

Yes, I'm seeing that now after testing. I believe there may not be a way around this, as it looks like Finder just copies the files straight to your computer without adjusting the time the file was created on your computer to the time the file was actually created.

I should note that the Date Time Digitized and Date Time Original EXIF data does not appear to change. If you're looking for a reliable reference to the time the photo was taken, it may be more reliable in general to reference those fields for accuracy. They aren't fields that would be modified normally, unlike the filesystem's creation date. You can find them in Preview by clicking View » Show Inspector and switching to the EXIF tab. Photos should also have something similar for viewing EXIF data.

 

[MlleJules]

But why is this only happening to some photos? It's maybe 5 or 10 in every hundred. It just doesn't make sense! Isn't it a bug?

 

[Shadow Jolteon]

Sorry, I thought it was happening to all photos you imported with AirDrop. I'm not really certain why it would ever preserve the file's created date. In my experience, it's always set to the date and time the file was added to my computers, from what I can tell.