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As far as I understand from the docs I’ve found (including the tag listing of ExifTool and the EXIF standard), ExifTool’s “CreateDate” is meant to be a synonym for the standard’s “DateTimeDigitized”, so in cases like OP’s, not the same as “DateTimeOriginal”, which is the one that’s supposed to represent the time the original photo was taken.

PLL
– PLL

2026-03-30 21:44:37 +00:00
Commented yesterday
2

For the record, Unix timestamps do go before 1970. The unix timestamp is defined as number of seconds since Jan 1st, 1970, but this number also has a negative range, which extends to as low as the year 1901.

slingeraap
– slingeraap

2026-03-31 14:49:45 +00:00
Commented 13 hours ago
@slingeraap Indeed, learned something new today.

nohillside
– nohillside ♦

2026-03-31 15:57:28 +00:00
Commented 12 hours ago
@slingeraap However, while Unix time can be negative, APFS time which also starts at January 1, 1970 cannot.

ReinstateMonica3167040
– ReinstateMonica3167040

2026-03-31 22:39:34 +00:00
Commented 5 hours ago
@ReinstateMonica3167040 I was able to create a 1964 timestamp on an APFS drive

nohillside
– nohillside ♦

2026-04-01 04:31:21 +00:00
Commented 6 mins ago

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