It's About Time

[Chris Kern]

Anybody aware why the major camera manufacturers have never deployed firmware that switches automagically between standard and daylight saving (summer) time?

My impression is that all governments which "spring ahead" and "fall back" do so on a regular schedule that should be trivial to code.  Maybe not on a ±UTC basis, but certainly with the simple addition of a country field.

I usually don't have any difficulty remembering to change the real-time clocks on my cameras when I visit another time zone—it's an item on my pre- and post-travel checklists—but at least once each year I manage to forget to change my camera clocks until after I've already embedded the wrong metadata in some images.  (And, yes, I know it's easy to change the timestamps.)

[BJL]

A good question, since in fact many cameras already do --- the ones with phones attached. It is easier to do when the device can track its location and so know what time zone it is in.

[Chris Kern]

A good question, since in fact many cameras already do --- the ones with phones attached. It is easier to do when the device can track its location and so know what time zone it is in.

I suspect most or all cellphones snarf the current local time from their connected cellular networks.  But I don't see why a time change can't be implemented algorithmically by reference to a country field, a UTC field, and the date.

[BJL]

I suspect most or all cellphones snarf the current local time from their connected cellular networks.  But I don't see why a time change can't be implemented algorithmically by reference to a country field, a UTC field, and the date.

Could be, but as with internet-connected cameras, my preferred solution would be through tethering: get the time zone info over WiFi or Bluetooth from the phone in my pocket. That would also be nice when I travel, so I do not have to reset the clock in my camera. The phone could also help with location tagging of the images.

[aduke]

There are exceptions to almost anything. In particular, Arizona does not observe daylight time, except for the Navajo Reservation which is the major portion of the northeast corner. In Canada, all provinces observe it, except Saskatchewan. See http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/places-daylight-savings-time-featured2.png?w=1740


Alan

[SunnyUK]

Given that cameras are sold all over the world, and that there are many, many different schemes, it wouldn't be entirely trivial to code. And once coded, it would risk becoming obsolete when countries every now and then change the schedule. Plus, of course, it's not likely to be a feature that the manufacturer can brag about to get more sales.

[barryfitzgerald]

Never really an issue for me and I've a fair few bodies, unless you have 20 cameras I can't really see the problem

[kencameron]

... it wouldn't be entirely trivial to code....

And unless it worked perfectly it would be a royal PITA.

[AFairley]

Thanks for the reminder!     Always the one clock I forget to change. 

[Chris Kern]

And unless it worked perfectly it would be a royal PITA.

It wouldn't be difficult to make it work cleanly.  Computer operating systems typically still include code to implement standard-to-summer time conversions for users who can't or don't want to connect their machines continuously via the public Internet to a Network Time Protocol server.  It's not much more complicated than a simple table look-up, although, as previously pointed out, some jurisdictions occasionally change their conversion dates; keeping such a feature current worldwide would require firmware updates.  (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority maintains an up-to-date public domain database.)  But offering such a feature would certainly help many forgetful users—myself included—avoid embedding inaccurate timestamps in their image metadata.

However, SunnyUK makes a good point: there's little motivation for manufacturers to do it because nobody is going to be more inclined to buy a camera simply because it resets its realtime clock automatically twice a year.  And a significant technical disincentive which only now occurs to me is that many cameras may not have the free space in flash memory to store the alpha strings that would be required to display all the possible menu picks to the user.  If storage space was an issue, the feature might need to be restricted to a subset of jurisdictions, with users elsewhere updating the clocks manually as they do now.