Daylight Savings Checkup and Time Zones

Bi-annual ritual

My son was born at 12:55 AM in the fall before the time change. As my wife was in labor, someone went around to each room and adjusted the analog clock back one hour…well ahead of the time change. Even thought he was born at 12:55 AM, the clock said 11:55 PM. Confusing, right? Well, at least we didn’t have to worry about which 1:XX AM he was actually born at (the first or the second?).

Devices getting smarter?

The bi-annual clock changing escapade is becoming less and less of chore. With internet connected “things”, the era of the VCR flashing the eternal 12:00 AM is coming to close.

DSLR’s don’t seem to be coming off the list anytime soon. My current camera does have GPS built in and the corresponding time synchronization. It is always correct but the time zone has to manually adjusted. So basically, it still needs attention every six months.

Despite knowing this, I might go a few weeks before I realize that I haven’t changed it. In variably, I always end of adjusting the Date Created in the EXIF to plus or minus one hour.

And since Lightroom doesn’t natively support time zones, it basically ignores them. Shout out to Jeffrey Friedl for maintaining an awesome GPS plugin that actually respects the time zone.

Which time zone to use when traveling?

I use to travel for work between Cincinnati and Dallas (EST & CST, respectively) about every 6 weeks. I never did get a rhythm on whether to switch my device or not. Invariably, my iPhone would be set to whatever local was. Out of laziness, I would just keep my laptop to EST. Unfortunately, I would missing at least one meeting each trip.

When it comes to photography, I believe that the picture should always be in local time and ideally specify the time zone in the EXIF so that there is no doubt.