Former Dunedin police photographer Trevor Gardner has told the High Court in Christchurch cameras used to record the scene of the 65 Every St murders on June 20, 1994 did not have the time and date mechanisms switched on.
Mr Gardner, the first Crown witness called on the first day of evidence in the David Bain retrial, said the time and date could be shown on his video camera but was not on probably because he did not think it was vital.
He did not believe the still camera he used at the time had a time and date mechanism.
He no longer had his notebooks from the time of the murders and thought they had probably been lost in one of many moves. He had left the police the year after the Bain family were murdered, Mr Gardner told defence counsel Helen Cull QC in cross-examination.
He agreed the time and date of photographs was important, but he said it would have been recorded by the officer directing the photography.
Without the negatives, he could not be sure the photographs on the Jedi system and in the main book of photographs were in correct sequence, Mr Gardner said.
But the photos would be a true and accurate description of what was present at the crime scene, he told Ms Cull.
Earlier, technical gremlins delayed the start of evidence.
A problem with the court's recording system has left counsel, police officers and more than 20 media with nothing to do in the meantime.
The jurors arrived about 9.45 but an hour and a half were still in the jury room while technical staff worked on the problem.
Eleven large cardboard boxes of Crown exhibits on a long table between the registrar and Crown counsel dominate the front of the courtroom today although the jurors will probably see the exhibits electronically on the screens provided.
Bain (36) denies murdering his parents, Robin and Margaret, two younger sisters, Arawa and Laniet and 14-year-old younger brother Stephen at the family home in Andersons Bay on June 20, 1994.
He served 12 years of a 16-year non-parole period after his conviction in 1995 in the High Court in Dunedin and was released in 2007 after the Privy Council said there should be another trial.
