Creeping camera clocks (no GPS sync)

Pound Coin

Pound Coin

Horatio Nelson
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I shoot event stuff with a Nikon and an Olympus. (Great for staving off dementia with the requirement to maintain muscle memory. :D )

My workflow includes throwing them all into Capture One, then looking at them in chronological order. That's because I swap between the camera, depending on what is happening. I can see a long shot, followed by wide, and I remember what happened in the event - so I am expecting the subsequent shots. But, at 20 secs time shift, I am presented with the images mixed up in C1.

I cannot remember when I last synced the clocks in the cameras, a few months ago, but tonight, they are 20 seconds apart. In this day and age - how can that happen? Every image taken on a digital camera is tagged with the time taken. Why are the internal clocks so rubbish?
 
Pound Coin said:
I shoot event stuff with a Nikon and an Olympus. (Great for staving off dementia with the requirement to maintain muscle memory. :D )

My workflow includes throwing them all into Capture One, then looking at them in chronological order. That's because I swap between the camera, depending on what is happening. I can see a long shot, followed by wide, and I remember what happened in the event - so I am expecting the subsequent shots. But, at 20 secs time shift, I am presented with the images mixed up in C1.

I cannot remember when I last synced the clocks in the cameras, a few months ago, but tonight, they are 20 seconds apart. In this day and age - how can that happen? Every image taken on a digital camera is tagged with the time taken. Why are the internal clocks so rubbish?
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This has always been the case. 20 seconds of slip isn't too bad over such a long period of time,

Think yourself lucky with Sony up until the recent launch of the A7IV there was no seconds on the clock.

We have 6 bodies that we take to every wedding that have to be synced every time and it's a right pain with no seconds available.

Although to be fair, if you sync the camera to your phone each time it automatically updates the clock.
 
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Basically, at the heart of any local timekeeping is an electromechanical device. The timekeeping depends on an oscillating crystal, vibrating at approximately 4.33MHz (4,300,000 vibrations per second) - the miracle is it works at all! having a 99.9999% accuracy (30 seconds a year) really isn't too shabby.
 
f/2.8 said:
This has always been the case. 20 seconds of slip isn't too bad over such a long period of time,

Think yourself lucky with Sony up until the recent launch of the A7IV there was no seconds on the clock.

We have 6 bodies that we take to every wedding that have to be synced every time and it's a right pain with no seconds available.

Although to be fair, if you sync the camera to your phone each time it automatically updates the clock.
Click to expand...
I think that will have to be added to my workflow!

I'll check what phone syncing is available, thanks.
 
In an ideal world, you would synch using NTP, but it is rarely implemented on cameras. As they develop Internet capability , you should see it happen.

Not that it is much use to you, but I used to synch my photos to a GPX track, so I could geotage them, and I have software that will bulk adjust exif + or - time, but it is only suitable for jpg.
 
It was an issue for me when I used a 5D2 and recorded the GPS route on my phone. LR would bring the images and track together to apply the location to each image. A few seconds error rarely mattered, as I could not move far in that time. Once I was an hour out (summer/winter) so that placed many images as many miles from when they were captured. I made sure that the time was accurate from then on. Later I traded the 5D2 for a 5D4 and, as this incorporated GPS, it was no longer have an issue. My Sony A6600 does not have GPS but I do not bother with accurate location now and just roughly allocate position on the LR mapping module.

Dave
 
FWIW - if you use OITrack or the newer OM Share for Olympus - when you connect to the camera WiFi hotspot it syncs the clock to the phone time for GPS logging.
The logging remains in synch so I don't need to do it every day when I'm on holiday.

I have a Windows 7 PC that I use for recording TV - it is supposed to synch with a Timer server but it never does it by itself. That can drift by enough minutes in a few months to chop the start off a recording. I just have to remember to manually force it to connect once in a while
 
LeeRatters said:
Up until the end of March the clock on my camera was 1 hour out! It's corrected itself now though :)
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Oddly enough, the clocks on my cameras are all an hour slow at the moment (according to the other clocks in the house). Correct though!!!
 
Nod said:
Oddly enough, the clocks on my cameras are all an hour slow at the moment (according to the other clocks in the house). Correct though!!!
Click to expand...

I have a little bedside type clock in work above my toolbox. I haven't changed it now for about 3 years :ROFLMAO: There's a bigger one on the wall that's connected and keeps it time so I don't go home late. Don't worry about that! :ROFLMAO:
 
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