How to Set “Quartz Date” on a Vintage Film Camera

What Does “Quartz/Auto Date” or Data Back Do and How to Use It

7 min read by Dmitri.
Published on May 12, 2024. Updated on July 3, 2024.

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The rear panel of a Konica AA-35, a.k.a. Konica Recorder shows the “Auto Date” controls.

In this guide: What is an “Auto Date,” “Quartz Date,” or a data back? How to set the date/time on any vintage film camera. Replacing the batteries. How does the data back work? Cameras featured in this article. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!

What is an “Auto Date,” “Quartz Date,” or a data back?

Some vintage film cameras, from certain fifty-year-old copies to nearly modern early 2000s models, can stamp the current date and/or time in a corner of your photo. This is a film-only analogue metadata embedding solution meant to help you remember the time and date a particular image was taken.

Stamped dates on physical film frames are significantly more resilient against loss or tampering than digital metadata. The dates are part of the image, which made them historically difficult to hide.

The date on this photo (bottom-right) says March 9th, 1984. However, it was actually shot in 2024, but the date function on my Konica Recorder can not go past 1999.

However, modern digital editing tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, make erasing date stamps easy without having to crop the photo. In rare cases, this can cause issues in the image, but 99% of the time the job is as easy as selecting part of an image and choosing Edit » Fill » Content-Aware Fill.

Many manufacturers of the time did not expect their products to be still in use in 2024. This is why you may find cameras that would not let you set a calendar date past December 31, 1999 — or another arbitrary date, like 1987. But some still work today. You can check this list of a few cameras that have dates which work past 2020.

Date stamps don’t have to be accurate to be a creative device. For example, they may be set to an earlier date to give an “aged” feel to the photographs. Alternatively, if the date on your camera can not be set to the year you like, it may let you use a clock timestamp instead (which can be correct but will omit the calendar date — may be less useful).

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A fancy-looking date stamp made by Pentax Espio Mini.

How to set the date/time on any vintage film camera.

You shouldn’t need a manual to set the clock on your vintage film camera. It may seem a little tricky at first, but most share common functionality and are quite easy to set up.

As I’ve mentioned above, some data backs won’t let you set a current calendar year — something to keep in mind. You should also know that many point-and-shoot cameras of the era used a separate battery for their data back (I cover this in further detail below).

There may be as few as two tiny buttons that let you set the date; they may be so small that you’ll need a pencil to press them — this is often on purpose to avoid accidental resets. The labels on your buttons may not be in English, but you can use Google Translate or a similar tool to figure out what they say.

Minolta P’s (Riva Panorama) rear panel and data back controls.

One button is often labelled “MODE” and another is “SET” or “ADJUST.” The “MODE” button will typically let you cycle through different date display styles. This could mean a calendar date (i.e., yyyy-dd-mm) » clock (i.e. hh-mm) » blank (i.e., no date printed or -- -- --).

If you press and hold the “MODE” button, one of the numbers will start blinking. Pressing the “SET” button would typically increment that number up until it circles back to the lowest number (i.e., 10 » 11 » 12 » 00). This is when you’ll typically find out if your camera can set a current year for you. Pressing “MODE” again will switch to the next number (i.e., from hour to minute, then to year, then to month, etc.) until you’ve set everything and the numbers stop blinking.

There may be a third button, “SELECT,” on your data back. In this case, you’d use this button instead of pressing and holding the “MODE” button.

Some data backs have a button under each number (i.e., year, month, day), simply pressing which will increment the above number.

There may be some slight variations on the above interface, but in general, they all kinda work the same.

If you can’t find a manual for your camera, I encourage you to use the above as a guide and try poking at the numbers to see what the display shows. Typically, the numbers are incremented by pressing a single button, and you may find a few display modes; if the display shows dashes (i.e., -- -- --) or nothing, a date will not be printed on your frame.

Replacing the batteries.

Whereas newer point-and-shoot cameras will use power from the main battery for their data backs, earlier models require a separate cell. The tiny clocks could last months, even years on a single battery; thus, manufacturers often left the job of replacing them for service centers. This means that you may need a micro screwdriver set to open up the hatch that holds the battery. You will also need to do this while the camera has no film inside (as you’ll need to open the film door).

Minolta AF-S with Quartz data back. It needs a separate battery to power it.

If your data back uses a separate cell, it may be hidden inside the camera’s film door, near the pressure plate. It can be obscure but typically look like a plastic piece that’s a circle or a semi-circle, flush with the rest of the door, held by a single or two screws (in some cameras, there’s a plastic lock that you can open without a screwdriver).

Unless you have a manual, you may not know which battery it needs until you open that door. However, it’s usually something flat and round, like CR-2025 or CR-2032.

How does the data back work?

There’s a fascinating video by Applied Science on YouTube (I’ll post it below in the comments) where they tear down the camera and examine the data back.

Fujifilm Cardia Tiara’s data back.

The trick to democratizing the data back feature for even the cheapest point-and-shoot cameras is that its key component was manufactured separately using an ingenious design with cheap, simple electronic components. It used an incandescent light bulb to shine light through an inverted LCD display, projecting it onto the back of the film.

And since the projection happens on the back of the film, the digits appear red or yellow. They are red or yellow because the most sensitive colour layer near the back of the film is red (which is why flipping the film inside the camera creates a redscale effect).

Cameras featured in this article.

Many of the cameras featured in this article are excellent point-and-shoots, which I really enjoyed reviewing. But all you see here is their butts.

So here’s where you can find out how they look from the front, the pictures they make, and what I thought about them, in order of appearance:

Konica AA-35, a.k.a. Konica Recorder — a half-frame point-and-shoot film camera with autofocus, autoexposure, motorized film transport, and a very wide lens.

Pentax Espio Mini — one of the smallest and the best-designed film cameras on this list. It’s also an inspiration for the new 35mm film camera Ricoh-Pentax is working on this year.

Minolta P’s (Riva Panorama) — is a unique panoramic autofocus film camera with an ultra-wide lens and a magnificent finder.

Minolta AF-S — an affordable point-and-shoot film camera that’s a little bulkier than the rest. It’s the oldest camera on the list, but it comes with an excellent lens.

Fujifilm Cardia Tiara — this is the smallest film camera out of the bunch and perhaps the prettiest. It has a good lens, housed in a tiny aluminum body that feels like a pricey, modern gadget.

✪ Note: If small film cameras are your thing, check out this list of the smallest full-frame 35mm film cameras ever made.