Date stamp and SET CLOCK · User manual

Turning the stamp on

The date stamp lives on the LOOK page of the MENU. All its rows are remembered between launches.

Row	Options	Default
DATE STAMP	OFF, DATE, TIME, DATE+TIME	OFF
DATE FORMAT	OCT 22 2026 · 2026.10.22 · 22.10.2026 · '26 10 22	OCT 22 2026
TIME FORMAT	12H, 24H	12H
CORNER	BOTTOM LEFT, BOTTOM RIGHT, TOP LEFT, TOP RIGHT	BOTTOM LEFT
CLOCK	Opens SET CLOCK under the row	The phone's clock

The stamp is burned into the image itself, on photos and on video, at 4.5% of the frame's height, in the corner you chose. Its lettering follows the decade:

before 1970, a cream italic serif;
from 1970 to the 2000s, the glowing orange digits of a camcorder or a compact's date back;
from 2010 on, plain white system type.

Your date format is also used for the date printed on the share card.

SET CLOCK

Tap the CLOCK row and SET CLOCK opens under it, like the clock page of an old camcorder.

The LCD shows the date on the first line and the time on the second, in your formats. A status line reads LIVE or MANUAL, then "TAP A FIELD · TURN TO SET" (or "DISPLAY OFF" when the stamp is off).
Tap a field (month, day, year, hour, minute, AM/PM) to select it, then turn the ADJUST jog dial to change it. The first time you open SET CLOCK the jog makes a half-turn to show you it turns; the first time you press a field, all fields flash once.
LIVE ("SYNC TO NOW") goes back to the phone's real clock. That is the default.
SET ✓ closes the page.

Once you set the clock by hand it keeps running from the time you set, as a real camera's clock does after you set it wrong. Set it to 14 August 1987 at 3 pm today, and tomorrow at the same hour it reads 15 August 1987. The footer says so: "THE CLOCK KEEPS RUNNING FROM THE TIME YOU SET, LIKE A REAL CAMCORDER." With LIVE on it reads "FOLLOWING THE PHONE'S CLOCK". The setting is remembered between launches.

The controls at the bottom of SET CLOCK

Control	Positions	Same as the MENU row
DISPLAY mini dial	OFF / D+T / DATE / TIME	DATE STAMP
FORMAT mini dial	MMM D Y / Y.M.D / D.M.Y / 'Y M D	DATE FORMAT
24H switch	Off (12H) / on (24H)	TIME FORMAT
POSITION	A mini viewfinder with four corner bars: tap one	CORNER

Styles and technologies with their own date

Some cameras printed a date whether you asked or not. Even with DATE STAMP set to OFF, these looks still print one:

photo styles whose camera or lab dated the print, such as the Orange Date Imprint, the Orange Date Stamp Compact, the Digital Date Imprint, the Month-Dated Border Print and the Handwritten Margin Note: these print the date;
the Surveillance Camera Tape, which prints date and time, as a security recorder burns them over every frame.

They use your date format, time format, corner and clock, with the decade's lettering described above. If you turn DATE STAMP on yourself, your choice wins.

Every one of these prints the same corner stamp as DATE STAMP. The Handwritten Margin Note doesn't write the date by hand, and the Month-Dated Border Print doesn't print a month on its border: both get the regular stamp in the corner.

With FRAME on in the 1990s and DATE STAMP on DATE+TIME, the period frame also runs a tape counter, like a camcorder's viewfinder.

Dates on imported videos

In IMPORT, the DATE chip stamps the video's own recording date instead of the camera clock. It is disabled when the file carries no date.