Exif date field 'DateTimeOriginal', does not allow dates earlier than 1970 I think.

According to the EXIF spec, DateTimeOriginal is to record "The date and time when the original image data was generated", as compared with DateTimeDigitized which is to record"The date and time when the image was stored as digital data"

For example my Great Grandfathers photo was recorded in 1882, and digitized last year. ExifTool allows me to enter these dates in the approprate fields, but when I try to import the photos into f-spot I get error message

Argument is out of range
Parameter name: Parameters describe an unrepresentable DateTime

If the Photo is of an Original Painting, the original may have been been painted many centries ago.