Saturday, 18 April 2009

More smoke and Mirrors

Ok allow TB to get technical for awhile. Another twist in the elusive Mirror story... Someone who is much more technically minded than TB has got in touch to shed some more light on those photos.
They wrote in the comments on the last story:

"While the story was still up there on the Mirror site I checked the EXIF data on the photos (using Opanda EXIF as a Firefox plugin). The data showed the camera used and the shooting date and time, as well as details of the exposure. Whilst I don't recall the precise date and time details, I'm sure they were consistent with Draper having returned from his Canaries vacation.
When you check the EXIF on his current story about Stavros Flatley you will find that those images were shot on April 15th 2009.
Opanda also allows you to check the IPTC data. Coincidentally (?!), it shows that the IPTC record (which tags images as being shot by Vellacott for the Mirror) was edited on 10th December 2008 - presumably the date he took delivery of the camera. Perhaps the "sources" should re-examine the EXIF data, rather than the IPTC tag?"


The Mirror really botched trying to hide this story, and indeed the pictures are still located on the Mirror servers:

https://blogs.mirror.co.uk/mirror-images/Draper10computerblog.jpg


That photo contains the full EXIF data. It shows that the image was shot at 16:15:27 on 15th April 2009 according to his camera's inbuilt clock, using 16mm focal length (from 16-35mm zoom) and a shutter speed of 1/125th at an aperture of f/6.3 and 1600 ISO

The 10th December was seemingly when Vellacott got the camera not when he took the photo, which is not what sources at The Mirror said. So now the original questions return...
What was Draper doing with that computer and why did the Mirror pull the story!?

6 comments:

jamesburdett
said...

It does surprise me how stupid people can be sometimes, and how easy it is in the technological age to prove how stupid they are!

Anonymous said...

Fucking hell Mr Bear this is a cracking scoop.

Good work chap

Man in the Street
said...

Excellent stuff!

Anonymous said...

and in the 'copyright' bit, you can see mr Vellacott's mobile telephone number!

Bardirect
said...

Don't know much about this sort of thing myself but are there any photo journalism awards in the offing since this was a very good opportunistic scoop and Vellacott deserves a pat on the shoulders, or since its a Draper story probably a chip on the shoulder.

Impressed! said...

Blimey! Just installed EXIF - I had no idea there was so much info to be had from an image!

Good sleuthing!

Mightn't it be a good idea to save this to your own disk before the Mirror vapes the original?

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