How to add a date stamp to your photos

That orange date burned into the bottom right corner of every nineties photograph came from a quartz databack: a small LED array behind the film plane that exposed the digits straight onto the negative at the moment of the shot.

Why it was always orange, and always that font

The LEDs were red or amber because colour negative film is least sensitive to red light, so the digits could be exposed brightly enough to read without fogging the surrounding frame. The squared-off seven-segment shapes came straight from the digital clock displays of the era. It was a manufacturing constraint that became a period signature.

Why it is not the same as photo metadata

Every digital photo already carries its date in EXIF metadata, but that is invisible unless you go looking, and it is routinely stripped when a picture is shared or screenshotted. A burned-in stamp is part of the image itself. It survives the screenshot, the repost and the export, which is exactly why old prints still tell you when they were taken and your camera roll often does not.

Adding a place as well as a date

Databacks could only ever print numbers. A modern phone knows roughly where it is, so a stamp can carry a city name alongside the date. That single extra word does most of the work of remembering: a date tells you when, but a place tells you what was happening.

Getting the stamp

Instant Film Maxx burns both into the print as it develops, in the same orange seven-segment style, so the picture carries its own date and place wherever it ends up. Both are optional, and the place stamp is worked out on the device: the coordinates are never stored or sent anywhere.

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