How to get timestamps from APS photos?

February 24, 2012 9:25 AM

I recently got my old negatives and prints digitized, including many that were on APS film. APS film has time stamps embedded in it that are typically printed on the back, but they weren't saved in the digital version (checked the EXIF tags too). Is there any way to get the time stamps from the negatives without having to get reprints of every photo?
posted by Nikolai to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (3 answers total)

APS film, if I remember correctly and according to wikipedia, stored that information magnetically so you can't do anything personally, you'll have to bring it to a lab and hope that they have machines that can read it and display it without printing the photos and that they're willing to write it all down for you. It's been ages since I worked a minilab machine that could read the magnetic encoding, so I'm not use beyond this information.
posted by Brian Puccio at 10:35 AM on February 24, 2012

Well reading the APS data strip got some discussion over on the photo stackexchange.

It's not reassuring and a look at some places that do APS scanning showed only one that addressed the issue... and they explicitly said they don't get the information (and claim there's no dedicates scanning machinery which does, though that's pretty self-serving in context...).

Could you go at this sideways? Is there anyplace that will still print one of the APS contact sheets? I think they had the datestamp for each photo. Otherwise the wasteful way to do this would be to get the APS stuff printed and match the info to the scan. A drag but....

I'd see if there was a nearby Costco with a one-hour photo place that still is set up for APS. That seems like your most likely low-cost way to go.
posted by phearlez at 10:49 AM on February 24, 2012

Response by poster: I still have the index sheets, and they don't list individual dates unfortunately.
posted by Nikolai at 11:53 AM on February 24, 2012